


The Cat Unbreathing

by mythicbeast, rabbitprint



Series: Cats in Boxes [2]
Category: Kingdom Hearts 2
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-06
Updated: 2007-01-06
Packaged: 2017-10-19 13:41:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 31,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/201483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mythicbeast/pseuds/mythicbeast, https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabbitprint/pseuds/rabbitprint
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Is it alive, or is it dead?" "I cannot tell, but it does not draw breath."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Courtly Love and the Art of the Fall

**Author's Note:**

> Based on KH1, CoM, and KH2 only, no re-releases.

Vexen isn't there when Saix comes back.

It's near the start of -- what he calls later -- the Keyblade Massacre when Saix finally braves the stairs down to Vexen's quarters. No one is there. No one _should_ be there, he chides himself, since the only presence that shared that space had undoubtedly been a hallucination. A particularly vivid one, true, but little more than that.

Demyx is gone. First among the fresh casualties; possibly second, if Sora's presence and Roxas's absence are any indication. It has been over a year since Castle Oblivion fell. Namine and DiZ and the Keyblade Master have vanished from the Organization's surveillance network as quickly as rocks sunk into a pond.

Axel has proven himself to be a traitor, which surprises no one, or at least none of the Organization members who had been paying attention to VIII's erratic behavior over the latter half of the year. The Princess of Heart, at least, was recovered before Axel could do too much damage by retaining her; having Kairi as a prisoner is about as comfortable as handling live vipers, and Saix can only imagine what Axel would have done with her in order to force Sora's hand.

But to have another member of the Organization fall to the Keyblade Master's hands is almost a surprise, and an unpleasant one.

Even worse are the reports of Sora's second keyblade -- a sign that can only imply a reunion with Roxas.

It would be impossible to claim that they had never expected a day like this to come: when Roxas has been possessed by his Other, when dissent between ranks has lead to certain members in conflict, when the security of Kingdom Hearts is no longer a guarantee. The future is never certain, but missing half of the Organization from the start of their dealings with Sora cannot bode well.

No answers exist in the upper halls of the Castle. Nothing is left in the lower. What remains is a morass of uncertainty, of empty gaps where authority once existed to keep business running smoothly. There's not enough time to knit everything back together; there's not enough time for _anything_ anymore, and Saix's habits lure him back down to the place that's formed the center of all his riddles over the past year.

He goes to Vexen's quarters.

When Saix wrenches the hall door open, he expects anything to happen -- anything but the silence that greets him, the nothingness that yawns wide, threatening to pull him in. The air that circulates groggily around his face, stale and dusty. The room feels as empty as a tomb. He notes, distractedly, that the broken teapot is still stacked in a forlorn pile of china by the dustbin: a final chore he never got around to finishing before he stood up and left.

There is nothing of welcome, but there is nothing of rejection either. There is no trace of Vexen's whimsical passions and caprice crackling through the air, tangible even though their source was not. There is nothing of desperate ghosts or self-delusions; there is nothing that feels real, there is _nothing_.

In the end, what gives Saix the strange courage to step forward is the urge to resist becoming a part of that nothing as well. His steps are as heavy as a sleepwalker's, as a corpse brought back to life. He moves like a man in a dream.

He moves like a child: careful, wary, insatiable.

Alive.

He drops himself into a chair that remembers him despite his long absence. Its cushions allow his weight to settle in the right places, cradling his limbs while he thinks about the Organization's most recent loss.

The last time Saix ever saw Demyx had been before the musician's last mission to the Underworld. As in so many matters, passing orders down to the lower-ranked neophytes had become Saix's duty -- Zexion was no longer there to manage the task -- and he preferred to make sure that Demyx was aware of the import of his mission before IX actually departed. That was, if Demyx could actually get the necessary gear for the mission together first.

Typically enough, the cue cards had been Luxord's idea. On that basis alone, Saix suspected them to be nothing more than a great private joke at Demyx's expense, but IX had been adamant about finding them before he left. The berserker saw little enough harm in it, save for the fact that it was taking the musician a suspiciously long time to find them.

 _"They're by that sidetable," Saix had murmured at last, finally exasperated enough at watching Demyx turn himself in circles to comment. He was beginning to wonder if the Melodious Nocturne was secretly suffering from a case of short-sightedness or possibly myopia; the prospect was a dismal one._

 _"Ah, thanks!" Apparently capable of finding a larger object, but not the glaringly white rectangles upon it, Demyx had scrambled to snatch the cards up._

 _"Right, that's that, then -- I'm off!" Nobodies generally did not wave to one another before departing for a mission, but Demyx always did, and this occasion wasn't any different. The younger Nobody tossed Saix a jaunty salute before trotting towards a freshly-opened portal._

 _The berserker did not deign to respond, but inclined his head faintly regardless, turning to go._

 _He could still feel the empty portal yawning open behind him: IX remained on its threshold._

 _"...Yes?" he inquired presently, the question tart._

 _He could almost hear the wry grin. "Nah, just noticed you'd been -- I dunno -- kinda out of it, a while back. I mean, maybe it's just a moon thing or whatever." Before Saix could snap at Demyx for that remark, the musician had darted into the portal like an eel, voice echoing behind him._

 _"Stay safe!"_

 _The injunction had made the berserker blink slow and languid, unable to fathom what possible reason IX might have for wishing him well. Saix was the one staying at Never Was -- relatively certain of his continued security -- while the musician would be haring off on a mission to another world and couldn't even find his own cue cards._

In the end, Saix hadn't been the one who'd needed good luck.

* * * * * *

  
Vexen's rooms feel as empty as any of the others whose owners have passed. Even Demyx's presence has vanished entirely from the comfortable nook of the castle he had claimed as his own. Saix doesn't know who or what the musician's Other was, but IX clearly fancied himself something of an interior decorator, though not perhaps a particularly adept one. The brilliant fabrics -- _Agrabah, Land of Dragons, Port Royal_ his mind whispers, murmuring each source of origin automatically upon seeing them -- plastered across the walls of Demyx's rooms, meant to inspire optimism or at least a sense of life, only seem to underscore the distinct _lack_ of it now.

The musician's rooms do not feel haunted. In fact, much like Vexen's do now, they don't feel like anything at all. The only peculiarity Saix notices is a triad of Dancers undulating in synchronized time, silently stationed in one of the side-rooms -- a music hall of some sort, the diviner quickly judges, based on the acoustics and the shape. He considers dismissing them, since their presence appears purposeless. In the end, he does nothing. This is not his domain; he is merely an observer. The fact that they are masterless does not concern Saix yet; without Demyx's will to imprint them, the Dancers will dissolve away back into the more common form of Dusk soon enough -- as Marluxia's had, as Vexen's did.

Beyond that, there is nothing of note. He makes his inventory of Demyx's extensive collection of musical interests, then tucks his pen back into his pockets and opens a portal to his room, prepared to make a report on the matter that will at least be thankfully brief.

He pauses a moment, wavering, and then with a wave of his hand, alters the portal's destination, and steps directly back into Vexen's rooms instead.

The transition is not something he's done before. Always -- unconsciously and otherwise -- he's entered the scientist's rooms by the front door, the physical gateway. He's not sure why; perhaps because with Vexen's ghost, there had been enough of a sense of _presence_ that stepping in without permission seemed tantamount to walking in on someone in the middle of their morning ablutions. Just as invasive, just as degrading -- not that he could see Vexen's ghost even if he _was_ there, and even then, why should he have cared for the modesty of a dead man?

Or perhaps it was merely ritual: part of the habits that Saix taught himself until they took on a strength of their own, independently urging him to follow rank and file and procedure like the first stages of an oracular trance.

The dead have no secrets. Saix has rifled through the rooms of more than half of the Organization, and he knows this fact well. But Vexen's have had a way of hiding, of lurking in corners unexpected, of being painstakingly discovered in cupboards, in books, in the depths of his crockery and the sheets of his bed.

Now Vexen's room holds nothing of mystery, or of personality. It's as if no one has lived here for years. When he opens a cabinet he discovers most of the coffee has gone stale in its wrapping; Luxord is too busy for him to even contemplate asking for more, and even then Saix isn't sure if it's appropriate to. There's a kind of unspoken strain on all of them now, and though they cannot feel fear or depression, their bodies can still become exhausted. Every mission seems to drain each of the Nobodies in one way or another -- small enough not to hamper their performance, but noticeable to Saix's watchful eyes. He would prefer not to compromise that balance any more than he has to, so he holds his tongue, and drops the ruined coffee into the trash bin.

Inevitably his wanderings lead him to the bed: the place that has served him as prison, as shelter, as home.

He hesitates upon being confronted by it. The sheets are still mussed at one corner, halfway tucked in from the last time he'd cleaned up. At first, he avoids sleeping in it; then, distasteful of avoidance, Saix pulls back the covers and sprawls on the mattress.

Sleep does not come for hours.

The bed accepts him easily as the rest of the furnishings; absently sniffing the sheets makes him wrinkle his nose and note that he'll have to change them for fresh ones if he plans to stay. To distract himself, Saix changes them anyway, pulling plain linen out of the scientist's closets and shaking the dust out of them as he peels the old sheets back and sets about busily remaking the bed. Task accomplished, he lies on top of the covers, feeling the bed shift and creak under his weight -- and between one blink and the next, he falls asleep, lulled by the calm stillness and the scent of mothballs.

Mercifully, his sleep is dreamless, but he wakes in fits and starts throughout the night, and when morning comes he is no closer to an answer than he was before.

The struggle for comfort reminds him of the first days of settling in Vexen's rooms, except now the uneasiness is not caused by anything as easily remedied as altering sleeping arrangements. There is nothing that should give him cause for fretting or concern, but he cannot shake either impression. It feels as if there is a critical point he has overlooked, an angle he has not considered, a variable he has missed --

 _You know what I really miss?_

Without any conscious direction, the ghosts of dead conversations resurrect himself in Saix's mind. He finds himself mouthing his own questions back in reply, automatically giving voice to the past.

"How do _you_ miss something?"

A chill that has nothing to do with room temperature crackles down his spine.

The difference is overwhelming. Saix once riddled over the impossible _why_ of the scientist's chambers, how they managed to retain a sense of life despite the passing of their owner. Now Vexen's quarters are as bland as the rest. As welcoming as the furniture is, as easily as the rooms accommodate the berserker's presence, Saix feels restless and wary without knowing why. What he remembers of the rooms had been relatively peaceful. It had been awkward trying to negotiate with the ghost, but not impossible. There had been something else to the rooms that let him take his ease in it, a quality that kept him from feeling as oddly foolish and _lost_ as he does now.

Saix is in the middle of dinner -- with so few of the Organization in the castle at any one time, the pretense of social interaction is ridiculous and the berserker has learnt to take his meals alone -- when his eye falls on the shattered teapot, and the awareness of what he's looking for suddenly hits him.

He's been searching for Vexen.

Saix's memory is surprisingly inclined to the tactile. Somewhat against his will, in the middle of their furtive encounters, he must have begun to create an image of Vexen through touch, dispassionately cataloguing the way that the feel of invisible skin underneath his fingertips as the nights went by. Without sight to guide him, the process had been a decidedly strange one. He'd felt like a blind man, groping for the edges of his world, orienting himself through sensation.

Whatever the case may be, incontrovertible fact remains: at some point, without realizing it, Saix had begun to keep a library of the scientist in his mind, a map of feel and touch that he came to know as closely as his own -- as intimately as the heft of his claymore in his hand.

Now that library is useless. Like a corpse, all those memories have nothing _living_ to attach themselves to -- and if not living, then at least _present._ Mobile. Existing. As soon as he untangles that train of thought, Saix suddenly wonders if this is how all ghosts are: capable of speech and thought and expression, but dissipating for the want of someone to simply remember.

He thinks of the stories of his childhood, filled with stories of ghosts and empty cities, and realizes, at last, that he might understand why Vexen might not have wanted to be left alone.

"Are you staying away because you're angry?" he asks the air, and feels foolish twice over. Vexen is not there, and even if he was, how could a dead man have emotion at all?

He's not sure how one would go about resurrecting a ghost. He's still not even sure how he managed to summon Vexen's spirit in the first place. Left to their own devices, Saix's fingers brush along the stacks of journals he left on a sidetable, and he contemplates the possibility of picking one of them up to read aloud again, and perhaps pull the scientist back to his side -- but that seems entirely too needy and dependent, not at all to his liking, and so he refrains.

Instead, he spares a moment to blink in surprise: his fingers have come away with dust on their tips.

He cannot imagine it has been that long since he was last here, but he counts the days off in his mind, lips moving faintly, and realizes it's been weeks since he visited, weeks since he let himself think about Vexen at all.

* * * * * *

  
The last time IV had crossed his mind had been during one of the rare meetings he'd had with the Key of Destiny, sorting through folders of task requests and allocating which scouting missions were most important. Roxas was customarily obedient to the point of obsession; he'd have his orders in hand and would be out the door before they could be explained to him, gleaning everything from the instructions provided. Roxas's ability to predict which tasks required of him and fulfill them had been nothing less than miraculous; Saix had become accustomed to XIII's consistency, assuming that the boy's dedication stemmed from his amnesia.

"I'd like to take a leave of absence," Roxas had announced before the briefing was half-over.

Saix stared in blank incomprehension. He had just been in the middle of explaining the details of the Olympus Coliseum when the outburst came; _why_ XIII had chosen to volunteer such a request, Saix had no idea, and even less idea about how to respond. "Members of the Organization," he answered instead, slow and patient, "do not get paid vacations."

XIII was too disciplined to frown, but his face had the barest suggestion of rebellion when he nodded and turned away.

That had been Saix's first warning.

Saix had gone to the Superior afterwards, instinctively seeking the advice and experience of someone who wielded greater authority than his own. The berserker had only recently finished filing his final reports of Vexen's rooms, and his elevated rank with Xemnas remained fresh and relatively new. Speaking with the Superior was a strange thing, not _quite_ as unnerving as treading on geyser fields or glass-laced ground -- not obviously risky, not openly violent, but more like coal-fires burning deep below the surface of the earth, endlessly simmering in wait to engulf the ignorant.

Coal fires, leaking poison in the air along with smog and smoke. Xemnas was dormant to look at, but one misstep, one crack underfoot, and Saix could be consigned to fiery oblivion. He could fall and be engulfed before even realizing his danger, and as Saix stood there, waiting for Xemnas to respond, the berserker found himself struck by a pang of fresh understanding into Vexen's perpetual twitchiness.

He had explained what had transpired during the course of the briefing. Xemnas had listened sympathetically, nodding at points with a mildly concentrated expression on his face. For a moment, Saix thought he had communicated the potential risk of Roxas's rebellion.

And then he had asked Xemnas what to do and the Superior's face shuttered itself back into its usual distant, inscrutable mask. Xemnas had shrugged, turning away. Clearly, the matter was beneath his attention; beneath it, or not interesting enough, or some other reason that Saix was not privy to. Whatever the cause, Xemnas was as untouchable as ever.

Saix did not have a heart to sink in his chest, but at the time, he had found himself listening for the distant roar of incineration.

* * * * *

As it turned out, Roxas left anyway, and broke one of the Diviner's windows in the process.

Staring at the shards of colored glass scattered across the floor, Saix wondered if anything could have been changed by giving in.

* * * * *

  
Everything in Vexen's rooms is old and new at the same time. Without quite intending to, Saix finds himself prowling through them again, tracing familiar routes held in his memory even as he unwinds his steps over the past year of history. He traverses the distance from the door to the armchair and recalls the first time he stepped into these rooms, the sights that met his eyes when he first intruded. The teapot is no longer on the table to greet him, but then, neither is the first of Vexen's journals that he ever began to read.

That reminds him to look for where he’d last left the book; while going through Vexen's papers and records, Saix hadn’t bothered to file them in order, or even tidy the ones he'd already read into their own pile. He'd simply taken to the habit of memorizing them by look and feel, and if any two were too similar to tell apart, reading the first line was enough to orient himself. There was a point where he'd had the journals fanned around him and could pick out the specific one he needed with a touch alone, since the contents had become so familiar -- but now that intimacy is lost and Saix finds himself uncertain of everything.

He cannot seem to remember where he's placed that one journal, now that he wants to find it. Idle ponderings turn into an obsession. Saix turns over cushions and sheets, files and folders, searching under chairs and desks -- as if finding the very first book might somehow help him pick up the thread that had led him into the scientist's mind, the intricate labyrinth of Vexen’s soul.

Eventually, he finds the journal underneath one of the dressers in the bedroom, having been kicked there or otherwise slid underneath the furniture during the months he spent living with the ghost.

Picking lint off the cover, Saix spends most of the night reading and rereading, stitching words together in various attempts at recreating the initial experience of exploring the scientist‘s rooms. It's hard; his mind keeps jumping ahead to the ending of each section, automatically filling in the blanks. Memories of old fights get in the way.

When Vexen shows up the next day during morning coffee, his first words are not what Saix expects:

 _Stop filing the books upside-down._

The voice comes from behind him. Although he does not need to turn to face the ghost -- since there is nothing there to greet his eyes -- Saix does so anyway.

Instead of nothingness, the Diviner finds a pair of green eyes meeting his own.

For a moment, he nearly takes a step back at the sight; then he blinks, and the image is gone.

 _What's wrong?_ Vexen asks, testily. There seems to be nothing wrong with the scientist's voice, at least. _You look like you've seen a ghost._

"I have," Saix answers softly, as if anything approaching a normal volume might puff away the vision like so much mist. This time, he speaks the words with more certainty than the first time he uttered them; the denial is not assertion, but ritual. He surrenders to the madness. "You're dead."

A snort. _Lucky for me. If I were alive, the lack of wit in your conversation alone would be enough to end me._

After the ghost does not explode in a fit of temper, does not howl accusation or throw verbal venom at his face, Saix allows himself to carefully, warily relax. Only afterwards does he realize that he was ever tense to begin with, bracing for an attack that never came.

Engaging the scientist in conversation becomes a new habit for Saix. Whenever he perches in an armchair and settles in for the afternoon -- book spread over his lap, elbow propped on a stolen cushion -- he makes inquiries, the questions tumbling one after the other without conscious direction. Sometimes the subject is pertinent to current affairs, but when he starts to inquire about random concepts from Vexen's journals, it occurs to him that he's straying off the point. Instead of looking for actual answers, Saix is grasping instead at anything that will open discussion, _anything_ that will verify Vexen's presence.

Even the ghost seems to notice when Saix's eyes fall to the pages for the umpteenth time, for no reason other than to find another matter he can badger the scientist about.

 _You're asking a lot of questions._

Saix waves it away with a flap of the hand, too uneasy himself to actually answer. "There's nothing else to do," he mutters, and as soon as the sentence passes his lips, he knows he's lying again. "You're hardly offering any conversation on your own."

When he is silent, considering this fact, Vexen speaks up again. _At a loss for words already?_ the scientist snipes again, tone as curt as ever.

"No," Saix murmurs, "Just thinking."

 _Don't hurt yourself._

Not everything about the scientist's ghost seems back to normal. Certainly, the scientist is acting strangely casual -- as though they've never fought a day in their lives. It's a parody of how they once treated one another, this strange half-existence that feels more like Saix is going through the motions of talking to himself, wooing a memory back to life.

Saix doesn't know if it's _want_ that still incites Vexen's actions, cramping and curling inside the ghost's chest, familiar as a lover, distant as the sun. In the past, Vexen had certainly acted as if something was gnawing at him like a dog at a bone, making him restless and forcing him to pace like a beast before a storm, anticipating danger and searching for relief. If not that, then at least the last, tumultuous argument between them might have sparked a reaction, might have left a lingering inclination for revenge.

Saix wonders if Vexen has forgotten what has happened between them, if his memory has been wiped clean of that critical junction from confrontation to abandonment. The situation is not unlike handling the Superior, but where Xemnas is acidic fire, Vexen is -- predictably -- more akin to the element of frost. Vexen is sheet ice lined across the placid surface of a lake. Dealing with him requires the same amount of dexterity in order to safely navigate the uncharted terrain. Xemnas, at least, has the dormant malice of a volcano, never giving the impression of complete stability, but the scientist's veneer is completely impenetrable to Saix's senses.

He cannot gauge how much IV knows or is _pretending_ not to know, or if the scientist is doing any such thing at all; Saix does not know if he will find solid footing beneath him at the next word, or if whatever calm Vexen has drawn around him will shatter underfoot and consign him to a slow, choking oblivion.

Not that the scientist could kill him, even if he wanted to.

Saix waits, each time, for the snap and break of ice, but it never comes.

Lacking the intimacy they had fought for so carefully has more impact than he expected. It's as if Saix has reentered the other man's rooms at the wrong point in time, like two satellites on opposite ends of their orbits, so that everything he does is a step behind or ahead of Vexen's frame of reference. He's not sure if this should lend weight to his private belief that Vexen's ghost is a hallucination, a self-hypnosis that Saix must convince himself to believe -- or if his absence, his _departure_ was enough of a blow to the scientist that it left Vexen, temporarily, unmoored in memory.

If there was a magical Reset Program button to hit, that would restore people to a previous state -- over and over again whenever an error was made, a Reload Data File option to try again, like one of Luxord's games -- then Saix wonders where they might have gone wrong with the whole business of Kingdom Hearts.

If they could undo Roxas's return to Sora, perhaps they could undo Castle Oblivion. Perhaps they could undo finding Marluxia at all, or Larxene, or Axel. Maybe they could reverse things and only choose happier endings; maybe they would never be content with the results, but would endlessly continue to search for a better state of heart.

The press of nostalgia is suffocating. Vexen's strange behavior adds a cloying layer to being trapped in the routine the Diviner has recovered. When he can remember the need to breathe, Saix struggles away from thinking about what kind of consequences might have come from his own decisions.

This is not what he wanted. Returning to seven months ago, or eight, or nine is an empty endeavor when the Diviner is not even certain he has a week left to live -- but it's better than no company at all, in light of the chaos between worlds. Sora has vanished once more on one of his inexplicable quests. Reports last traced him to the vicinity of Hollow Bastion before he vanished near an abode that had been mage-warded against spies. The Keyblade Master is not the most consistent of heroes; he engages in bouts of action followed by periods of mysterious absence, and the only saving grace about his irregularities is that it gives his adversaries more time to regroup.

Curiously, Saix finds himself disinclined to linger overmuch on thoughts of Sora when he is resting in Vexen‘s rooms. It's as if the location, the furniture, the presence of the ghost -- even if they are no longer as he knew them, their existence stabilizes him all the same.

Gradually, the chambers begin to accept his presence once again; or perhaps more simply, he's hypnotized himself back into old habits at last, tugging them on as he might a favorite coat. Saix may be deluding himself with an illusion of normalcy, but in a way, it's a practical enough pursuit. Beside offering his body a place where it can take its ease, the odd stillness of the chambers gives him a chance to think, to plan, to speculate. To consider each new direction in the Keyblade Master's progress through the worlds, and mentally weigh how best their forces are to be regrouped.

For a short while, at least, Saix can pretend they have time.

It's enough.

After a quick stop to one of the more verdant worlds, Saix returns to Vexen's rooms with a crudely-wrapped package tucked into the crook of his arm. He thinks about giving some of the goods from the world to the Superior, as a form of tribute, but eventually he simply pens out a detailed summary of events and leaves it on Xemnas's desk.

The rest of the pilfered spoils, he's not so sure about.

With a lingering sense of defiance, he fishes out one of the scientist's blue-patterned bowls, washes it clean of grime, and plants it firmly onto the countertop. From his canvas bag, he pulls citruses of every color -- loud tangerines and brilliant lemons, sap-green limes and bitter grapefruit. The bright rounded shapes tumble into the porcelain with the dull thump of flesh, and Saix has to reach out to steady the bowl before the impact of the fruit knocks it over.

 _I didn't know you liked oranges,_ Vexen states, appearing in front of Saix's nose without warning.

Saix doesn't, but rather than admit it, he only shrugs. "You can't know everything."

 _It's just interesting._ Vexen reaches out with pale, translucent fingers, tracing along the curve of a lemon rind without actually touching it. _I used to like oranges, but not many others here did._

Saix realizes, then, why he gave into impulse: the stack of teabags in Vexen's cabinet, unused, had all been flavored with citrus. He'd assumed that the reason they had never been brewed was because they were not _coffee_ ; somehow, Saix's mind had completely missed the concept that Vexen might have kept the things around simply because they were pleasant to his senses.

He's interrupted from this revelation by Vexen's sudden appearance directly before his face, the scientist having walked through the table without any indication that having a large chunk of wood in his stomach might be bothersome. _What are you planning to do with them?_

The sight of Vexen has already ceased to faze him, and so all Saix offers is a languid blink. "Making sure that I have proper nutrition. Lexaeus's research journals suggested excess vitamins to help supplant our diets."

The lie slips off smoothly.

Vexen snorts. _And you care about staying alive **why** at this junction of time?_

Saix does not have the interest to fight, but he does anyway, old reflexes rising as sweetly as any of his triggered rages. "We can't all be like you," he snipes back. "We can't _all_ get out of work early."

* * * * * *

Organization meetings become more and more relaxed as their scattered days goes by. Formal discussions are less important to be held on a weekly schedule when no one is sure if another week will come at all. Now that there are only five of them left -- five out of thirteen, thirteen faces, thirteen names -- the meeting hall sits with more chairs empty than full.

It's as if, by mutual unspoken agreement, all of them find it easier to avoid the subject by simply not visiting there.

There are no younger members to impress or keep in line anymore; no need to put on a great show of hierarchy and law when Luxord is the most junior of them all, and after him, Saix. Instead, their discussions are sporadic, settled down wherever more than three of them are congregated at any given time. Often, this is on Luxord’s balcony. Saix has no excess furniture in his quarters, nowhere to put company that might visit, while the gambler's rooms are already tailored for group socialization.

They're talking about the disappearance of Roxas, and the victory at Hollow Bastion -- the thousand Heartless freed by the Keyblade has visibly strengthened Kingdom Hearts, to the point where the shape is cleanly defined between the clouds -- when it happens. Saix is tired enough that he's started to nod off despite himself, lulled by the aimless chatter; Xaldin is confident about his ability to capture the Beast through Darkness, and can't stop talking about it. Xigbar interjects the periodic complaint about how badly his Snipers are at risk the longer they watch over Kairi. Luxord is fiddling with a pocket hourglass, barely larger than an egg-timer from the kitchens, flipping it over and over and watching grain of sand slip through the pinched middle.

They talk, and even laugh a little, passing back and forth the observations of their work. Saix pointedly turns down any options of traveling to the Land of Dragons, citing a dislike of snow; Xaldin refuses on the basis that the local cuisine gave him indigestion.

They're in the middle of discussing the option of killing the Emperor outright to throw the countryside into disarray when, suddenly, Luxord straightens in his chair with a blink and turns the hourglass on its side.

"Time's up," he announces softly. "It's all borrowed from here on out."

The room falls silent, but the gambler provides no explanation as he gathers his things up, and leaves the table.

* * * * * *

  
It's after the Storm Rider dies on the Land of Dragons, and Xigbar returns home cursing that Saix starts to pay attention to Luxord's books.

Luxord's journals are the only materials Saix reads which still belong to living hands. X seemed amused when Saix inquired about other symbolism in cards and gambling supplies after being told of the Queen of Spades; he offered access to his personal library, and the Diviner accepted with polite respect.

Saix's preferred place of reading remains in Vexen's quarters, if only because the chairs there know the shape of his body and stay comfortable around it. With all the worlds crashing down around their ears each time Sora swings his Keyblade, the scientist provides Saix with something like relief, a much-appreciated respite from the troubles of the present. Certainly, Saix no longer has the luxury of lingering in Vexen's rooms for days, weeks on end -- not in the time they have allotted to them -- but whenever the berserker steals a few minutes to himself and curls up in a chair, book in hand and contemplating the wisdom of a nap, he can almost imagine things are as they once were.

"Do you know," Saix begins, not looking up, "Where the word 'checkmate' comes from?"

He thinks Vexen might be staring at him, either at the strangeness of the inquiry or the sight of Saix in the armchair with a book that doesn‘t belong to the scientist. It's a moment before IV answers.

 _No,_ he says at last. _It's not a Bastion word. But I expect that **you** do._

" _Shah mat_ ," Saix quotes with a strange kind of satisfaction, letting the syllables click sharply off his palate. "'The king is defenseless. The king is dead.'"

Vexen is quiet. If he were alive, Saix imagines that the other man would be using the weight of his gaze to force anyone else into mute obedience. Of course, now there is no gaze. There are no eyes to do it with.

Finally, Vexen speaks. _The king is dead,_ he acknowledges.

 _Long live the king._

"Long live the Queen of Spades," Saix quips back, turning another page in Luxord's chess manual.

There's a note scribbled in the margins of a diagram of a prisoner's dilemma, a hypothetical puzzle. Unlike Vexen, Luxord is not in the habit of providing helpful notes in his books, though Saix isn't sure whether this is because he accepts what is written at face value, or because he already has all the extraneous information written in his own mind. The latter certainly seems likely, given that Luxord seems to be a bottomless encyclopedia of information, at least regarding anything involving games or chance.

 _Maximize returns... rational self-interest... benefit of all._ The overly technical language has, by now, sent a dull, gentle throb through Saix's skull, and his eyes are drawn to the scrawl like a desert wayfarer's to the sight of an oasis -- mirage or otherwise, it's some form of relief. The handwriting sums the theory up neatly and cleanly:

 _Do what's best for everyone, and we all gain. Do only what's best for yourself, and you can win it all -- or lose everything._

Underneath that, a single warning: _Marluxia did not choose wisely._

He sets the book aside upon realizing that he's started to think of Luxord as already dead, as if the act of browsing the gambler's belongings is just preparation for another funeral. Forcing himself to think of matters in the present tense also keeps his attention focused in a different way. At some point, Saix realizes there's an advantage to having the ghost around that he hadn't realized before, as wrapped up in his own search as he'd been: Vexen has met Sora. Presumably, Vexen has fought him. The reports from the Dusks and the other Organization members are distressingly sparse, but perhaps the ghost knows of a weakness they have missed, or of a vulnerability that can be exploited.

So Saix asks.

Abstracts are less useful without a frame of reference, so Saix goes straight for the meat of the problem, seeking insight in one of the few quickest ways he can grasp it. Except -- the question that comes out isn't what he intended, and he doesn't have time to take it back before Vexen slowly, calmly answers.

 _The Keyblade Master is nothing like XIII._

"How so?"

 _Well for one thing, Sora is a **heart** \--_

"Don't be pedantic. You know what I mean."

 _High-strung today, aren't you?_ Vexen’s ghost swirls in place, a small eddy that blurs his form. _It's the truth. There's not much Roxas holds in common with his Other. I don't know if it's the lack of memory, or if..._ The scientist trails off.

"Or if?" Saix prompts.

Vexen shakes his head. _Even when Namine had taken away almost all of Sora's memories, he never lost his sense of purpose. It was like something... **beyond** his heart alone was urging him onwards, no matter how much he forgot._ The scientist laughs, a little self-deprecatingly, as if he found it unpleasant to speak about the events that lead up to his death.

Saix doesn't want to know this. He wants to know how Sora react and how Sora thinks and how Sora _fights_. Vexen's knowledge may be a year out of date, but Saix trusts the scientist more than Axel's sparse folio of observations from Castle Oblivion. VIII would never reveal information without a price, but for the scientist, just being acknowledged might be payback enough.

For that, the berserker tells himself, he will tolerate this.

"Long live the king," he whispers later, watching Xemnas turn one of Luxord's tables into an impromptu map, poker chips and other paraphernalia marking off worlds and individuals as strategy is discussed. Saix himself is represented by a teapot filched off one of the tables; Xaldin is embodied by a fork, while Xigbar is a half-empty glass of water and Luxord is the ubiquitous salt shaker. Xemnas is incarnated as a saucer with a slice of cake in it-- cake that he keeps grabbing the Xaldin-fork off the table in order to eat with, talking around crumbs as the meeting continues.

Only Luxord overhears the soft words, and the gambler does no more than quirk a brow at Saix; for his part, the diviner pretends not to notice, feigning raptness as the lancer attempts to wrestle the cutlery out of Xemnas' hand.

The members of the Organization do not speak as often as they used to about what they will do when they win. Now _when_ has become an _if_ ; now they wonder how many Nobodies the Keyblade Master will slaughter along with the Heartless, and what they can afford to lose. Saix notes, with some brief satisfaction, that he is still spoken of highly by the Superior. He is not expendable.

It seems unimaginable that Xemnas will perish. The rest of them is not so certain a matter.

But Saix has made his decision, he reminds himself -- and he has chosen to follow where Xemnas will take them, into a Nothingness where nothing is certain, rather than remain trapped in the stagnation of safe rooms and cold walls.

He's heard the whispers: the ones that say that the appearance of Kingdom Hearts in the sky has affected more than just Saix, that Xemnas has become even more ruthless ever since the events at Castle Oblivion.

He looks at the Superior these days, and realizes that even though he is as trusted as Xigbar -- as trusted as the second in command, nearer than anyone else -- it's _Xemnas_ who has pulled away from them all, becoming more incomprehensible and more powerful with each passing day.

They work, and keep working, regardless of the odds that may be stacked against them. Kairi is being arranged in a different cell now, one which will hopefully be more secure against the influence of the Light, particularly since all of Xigbar's Dusks seem weaker the longer they stay around the girl. Saix pulls his task reports back, leaving an entire stack of folders on the side of his desk, closed and forever uncompleted.

* * * * * *

  
Saix is ill for a week after he returns from the Deep Jungle. Xigbar, mercifully, takes up the slack; he volunteers to go to Agrabah in the berserker's stead, and Saix rolls over in his bed and wonders if the Keyblade Master is the type to kill people while they sleep.

He dreams again of a rusted garden, but this time there is a different quality to the search, as if the need to find what he is looking for is more imperative than ever. Unspoken threat looms at his back, and he doesn't dare turn to face it, uncertain if he will be able to flee it any longer if he pauses for even a moment. Once more he pushes his way through tangles of vegetation and curiously scummy water; once more he demands that the water give up its secrets.

This time as he pulls back the green fronds, thick and waxy under his hands, there's a curious sense of surrender -- as if the depths have decided to finally cede him their hidden treasure. Sensing the opportunity, Saix redoubles his efforts, clawing the waterweeds apart in slimy, wet armfuls that try to cling to his skin and drag him down. He shakes them off; his fingers search for the secret beneath. His hands burn and sting on the stiff leaves. He wades through an underwater forest that leaves miniscule gashes on his skin, soothed by the icy liquid.

When he finds the body nestled beneath the lilies, pondweed twined in its blond hair, he cannot say he is surprised.

Not even when it opens its eyes and rises to meet him.

Vexen's lips are cold against Saix's, and even colder as he pulls him into the water to drown.

What does surprise Saix is this: even as his breath is stolen from him, he cannot find it in himself to care.

* * * * * *

  
On the morning his fever finally breaks, Saix opens his eyes and finds himself covered in a flood of paper birds. His hands ache. Tiny cranes caught in his hair crackle faintly when he sits up, falling away from his scalp; he wipes out a small population of excessively floral-looking sparrows when he rests a hand on the sheets to steady himself.

 _About time you woke up. I almost thought you were going to die._

It takes the berserker a moment to register the voice, and even longer to fully process the sight that greets his eyes: paper, folding upon itself, creasing into sharp, fine corners on apparently its own power.

Or perhaps not as independently as it seems.

 _Hello,_ Vexen's ghost says -- translucent like an image through fogged glass, but visible all the same. The scientist licks a fold thoughtfully before undoing it, spinning the paper about and bending the material the other way.

Saix stares, and realizes he doesn't know if he's asleep or not. Always before, the scientist's ghost was restricted to established rooms, rooms which are several floors away. "How are you in _my_ room?"

The thought that follows, after he has decided that the papers feel solid enough, "How can you touch those things?"

 _It's a tradition,_ Vexen replies abruptly, by way of explanation. _I don't remember which world it came from. Possibly the Land of Dragons -- maybe the Land of the Sun. People make birds when a... family member is ill. Afterwards, you burn the papers and scatter the ashes. The birds will take away the illness with them and you become well -- do you see how simple that is?_

Superstition is a foolish direction for a scientist to take, and Saix thinks as much, very fervently.

"You haven't answered my question," he tells Vexen instead. " _How,_ " and he's not sure which word to emphasize, so he leaves long pauses between them all, functions of disbelief, "are you _here?_ "

The look the researcher gives him lies somewhere between amused and sad.

 _I heard you calling me._

And then, _Catch._

Saix's hand snaps out to capture the newborn paper bird when it flies across the room, distracting him for a bare moment-- long enough that, when he looks up, Vexen is gone.

* * * * * *

  
Regardless of what Vexen says, Saix does not burn the birds.

He tucks the one Vexen threw at him in one of the inner pockets of his jacket -- intimately close, as though keeping it near his chest could bring him an epiphany, or fill that empty space up. Paper is a poor substitute for a heart, but between the two of them, Vexen seems to be more caught up in the memory of _what could have been_ than the berserker ever could.

What that _could have_ involves, Saix isn't certain.

He wonders about the change that has come between them; if, during his illness, he had brushed the borders of death long enough to become familiar with its inhabitants. Or -- less mystical -- if his own powers had simply handled the irritation of Vexen's presence by encompassing it, by giving Saix the illusion of a familiar face, a familiar voice, like an oyster glistening a pearl.

What he knows of Vexen is this:

The scientist is sharp-edged, and his bones are the cause of that; on a smaller man, the flesh might have hung loose and paunchy, but on Vexen's frame, it is stretched taut and lean. Muscle mass is not something the scientist has in great proportion. It exists as hard sinew along the lines of his arms and shoulders. Even so, Vexen has strange soft spots along his body, slight indentations that Saix's fingers had once dipped into as reverentially as a pilgrim at a shrine. There are been strangely smooth patches as well, stretches of skin that alternate between warm and yielding and rippled and cold under his hands, and Saix recognized them for what they were: scars.

The Diviner scavenges some of the oranges from the fruit bowl while he works over the problem in his mind. His illness has not taken him too far out of the loop; apparently Sora had similarly dropped off the map for days, with no explanation given and no Heartless slaughtered. Reports had last pegged his ship as flying near Atlantica. Whatever the Keyblade Master might have found among the merfolk, Saix isn't certain that he wants to know.

 _You shouldn't eat those if you're not feeling well._

Saix pauses with a slice of orange halfway to his mouth; with a sense of defiance, he bites into it anyway. Tart liquid splashes over his teeth. "I thought fruit was good for you."

 _It normally is_ , Vexen agrees. _But when your body's defenses are too caught up in trying to fight off illness as it is, the acid found in citruses only aggravates it._

Saix thinks about this as he chews, cool juices stinging his throat.

"I hadn't imagined you'd cared for biology," comes next, right before a second vengeful bite.

 _One can't grow up around... Lexaeus and not pick up some tidbits._ The ghost's hesitation over the name plants a warning flag in Saix's mind as neatly as Roxas's frown. _Besides, Zexion was sick all the time. Prone to it. Even after he lost his heart._

Saix smirks, though he doesn’t have much energy for it. "Going to reminisce about old memories growing up?"

But Vexen doesn't snap back an expected peevish retort. _What better time than now? I'm dead,_ he points out, with calm certainty. _What else should I do -- chat about the weather?_ There's a brief flash of something indefinable in his eyes, something that's gone before Saix can register what it is, and then IV is leaning in towards him, brows arched, the corner of one lip quirked.

"...What," the diviner offers sullenly, turning the question into a flatly defensive statement as he resists the urge to lean away or retreat.

 _Maybe,_ Vexen says, slowly, _you just like being able to watch me talk._

The idea calls a scoff from Saix’s lips. “Don’t be foolish,” he chides, pushing away from the table, tearing off another chunk of orange with more force than he really needed. “What could the dead offer me?”

They stay out of alignment for what feels like weeks in a city with no sun -- but which Saix knows are merely _days_ , days where the Keyblade Master is moving too fast and time is running out for them all. Vexen's newfound visibility is an intriguing thing for the berserker, and his attention is inevitably drawn to it in idle moments. It's not as though he can help it. It's very difficult to avoid noticing a tall, thin man pacing on the ceiling, although the scientist himself doesn't seem to be fully aware that Saix can properly see him now.

In fact, Saix isn't sure that he really can -- Vexen's ghost comes in and out of focus as his senses attempt to define his frequency, and he has watched IV appear and reappear more than once in the time it takes him to draw breath. The diviner could be stripped of all but one sense, with nothing but _touch_ to guide him, and still he would be hunting for the edges of Vexen's soul, searching for the limits of the untouchable.

He knows the moment that Vexen's memory finally recovers because he finds himself suddenly pressed deep into the broken-in springs of his bed, limbs spread-eagled across the sheets. Vexen’s knee is jammed into his ribs. It’s hard to breathe.

He doesn't need to fake confusion: he knows why the scientist might bear a twice-impossible grudge, and the only question Saix would offer involves the timing. "I didn't lie," he voices calmly. "I came back."

Vexen's laugh is bitter, and not a little broken. _No,_ he responds, turning his face away. _But you certainly took your time about it._

"How did you forget?" Saix finds himself asking anyway, curiously detached. And then, feeling the question stir in his chest with all the weight of a grand revelation: "How did you _remember?_ "

 _I don't know._ Frustration in the answer. _I remembered sight and smell and sound and taste and **touch** \--_

"And then," Vexen says suddenly, voice taking on a different tone entirely, a solid ring that causes the wood of the table to hum a little in delicate echo, "I remembered _you._ "

* * * * * *

  
Something else has shifted again after the scientist‘s memory catches back up to speed; something about _Vexen_ , who has stopped acting as if it's vital to finish off the chemical proofs he never had a chance to complete, and has started watching Saix. Now that he can see Vexen, the berserker can also realize how often the scientist paces in silence, jaw tight, teeth clenched. It's not until Vexen notices how Saix staring at him oddly that he stops tracing a circle that cuts through the bedroom and the study, regardless of the somewhat incontrovertible presence of a very solid wall between both rooms.

The sight could be discomfiting, but then, it's not as if Saix asked to watch it, either.

Vexen stops and glares until the diviner turns his gaze away, and Saix wonders why it feels like this has happened before.

It's disconcerting. The change in Vexen's manifestation can't help but make Saix wonder what it's like to live even deeper in the cusp between life and death -- as if his status as a Nobody between Light and Darkness has crumbled to yet another stage, slipping away from reality without a heart to moor it. Saix should not be able to see a dead soul; he should not be able to touch one, to hear its whisper and feel its cold skin.

So Saix tolerates the occasional contact that comes between them, the brushing of fingers against his forehead and his hair, and doesn't spare the time to wonder why he isn't pulling away.

Now that the scientist registers in his sight, he's a presence that Saix is finding increasingly difficult to dismiss. It would be easy to blame it on the idea that Vexen is an irritation to the Diviner's senses, a figment that shouldn't garner as much of his attention as it does -- but Saix knows that much of the fault, really, is the curiosity that comes from being able to finally see more than an afterimage at the corner of his vision.

Curiosity wonders if he was right. If the mental map of Vexen that Saix has built in his head is correct, from the drum-taut stretch of an underfed stomach, to the proud weals of marred flesh.

Despite himself, the desire to investigate starts to grow.

Perhaps it's an animal instinct in Saix. Perhaps it's Vexen's habit of wanting to quantify everything that has begun to insinuate itself into his own routine -- or perhaps, more simply, it's merely more of the irrationality the ghost seems to bring with it wherever it goes, obfuscating Saix's senses until he does not know left from right.

Regardless, Saix cannot deny the inquisitiveness rising in him. Part of him wants to know if -- should he slide his hands under that illusionary jacket, pull the leather away from the other man's skin, see what lies underneath -- what he'll find is what he expects. Part of him wants to know if he was right about Vexen. Part of him wants to know what would happen if he reached out.

Would the scars be there because Saix expected them, or because they really exist?

Fortunately -- since most of him is reasonably rational -- Saix keeps his hands to himself, clenched into tight fists that he rests firmly on his knees as the ghost brushes by, well within arm's reach. The scientist seems to remember nothing of the bizarre intimacies of their last weeks of contact, and the distance is not one that Saix is willing to close.

Not now.

Another thought comes to Saix after a few days of watching the restless ghost -- days that seem to pass slowly, stretching like warm honey, extending indefinitely until the hours feel like weeks. It comes gradually, in the form of questions worming its way into his subconscious and lodging itself in his gut.

If the scientist has become more tangible to three senses now, sight and sound and touch, has he gained others as well? If Saix buries his face against where the other man's neck joins his shoulders, will he smell the academic's almost-desperation, the tang of his not-fear? If he laps his tongue against pale skin, will he taste sweat?

If Saix can do all of those things, how would he be able to distinguish Vexen from the living?

That particular chain of logic is a dangerous one to take, and Saix shuts it down the moment it starts turning in an unwanted direction -- far too late for him to avoid seeing its inevitable destination, an idea that makes him grimace even as it sends a crackle of expectation up his spine.

He's wondered about touching the scientist before -- in the first round of their acquaintance, it fell to Vexen to extend a hand, to orient Saix. Now the berserker no longer needs to rely on IV to know where he is: all he has to do is turn around and see.

But he doesn't dare risk more.

Ultimately, he isn't given the choice.

It happens by chance, when he's slumped in a chair reading over another journal, when he looks up just a little too quickly at a flash of blonde in his peripheral vision. His head cracks sharply against the ghost's chin, and in the middle of the sudden burst of shooting agony that travels through his scalp, he can hear the academic yelping in pain.

Another seed of their inevitable destruction germinates when that contact comes, like a final piece falling into place between them, bridging a gap that cannot be undone. Only a few hours later, Saix looks up to find Vexen standing beside his chair. The ghost has been silently watching Saix turn aimless pages, flipping through chapters until finally reaching the glossary in back, and then searching through the table of contents once more.

They stare at one another in silence for a time, and then Vexen finally speaks.

"So did he listen?"

They both know who _he_ is, just as much as they know the question and answer, about betrayals and warnings in advance. "No," Saix replies, keeping his eyes forward, choosing to let his gaze slide towards a corner of a bookshelf rather than meet the scientist's eyes. "He didn't."

Mercifully enough, Vexen does not say anything else on the subject of Axel and Xemnas; instead, he only gives a shake of his head.

The resignation of the gesture is a strange thing, something that reminds Saix of paper birds on plain sheets, color in an otherwise monochrome world -- and for all their brightness, the sentimentality to it all, the sense of defeat in their making. He gives into impulse, reaching out to catch Vexen by the chin, and tilts the man's head up.

"After all this time," he admits softly, "I can barely remember what you used to be like before you died."

His words break off there with a gasp Saix cannot stifle. As if his confession is the key that finally opened a door that should have stayed forever closed, Vexen’s ghost has started to spontaneously fade. The colors of his hair and skin run into one another like spilt paint on a palette, getting blurrier by the second. Vexen seems hardly perturbed by the sight of his own fingers becoming pale and translucent, though there's a tightness about his eyes. If Saix had to choose a word to describe him now, perhaps it would be resigned.

Suddenly the ghost moves towards him, reaching out, and the berserker finds himself backing away. It's not fear, but _instinct_ , a primal itch that warns Saix that if he lets the ghost touch him now, it will undo all the careful threads he has woven. But he hardly needs to exert the effort. Vexen's fingers are already dissolving away by the time they reach his face.

The scientist says something that Saix cannot hear, but he can see IV's lips moving, can almost read the words falling off his lips even as he leans in too fast for a kiss.

"Promise me..." And then he is too close, pressed up too tightly for Saix to read his lips any longer.

Vexen moves in him.

Vexen moves _through_ him.

And then --

Vexen is gone.


	2. The Roll of the Dice and the Turn of the Wheel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The diviner approaches the problem from a different angle, as life and death blur: the compass between them is broken. The pole is gone.

Vexen's disappearance leaves Saix in a haze of curiosity and weariness; he does not know what the scientist was trying to say with his final breath, his demand for one last vow. There are a million words that Saix can use to fill in the blanks. None of them are satisfactory.

He waits all night in case Vexen is simply fading out of range again -- if Saix's mental antenna has gone through a peculiar glitch and is no longer calibrated to the scientist's range. He starts to make a pot of coffee automatically before remembering the teapot is broken; forced to improvise, he draws a hot cup of water instead and breaks into the stash of old teabags, brewing stale oranges that taste like drinking drain cleaner.

Vexen does not return.

There is a sense of finality to the rooms as well now; no matter how many times he handles the books now, they are dead to his touch, little more than ink and paper.

Saix continues to stay in the scientist's quarters, though he has no ready answers as to why. He's not sure how to find Vexen a third time, or if he's meant to learn something from the scientist's return. If his last chance to see Vexen had been intended to communicate something, then Saix did not understand.

 _Promise me --_

On the day Luxord returns from Port Royal with his pockets empty and a heart under his arm, the castle is quiet, as if even the lesser Nobodies know that something is amiss. Dealing with Kairi is not a task which Saix feels particularly enthused over. Left to his own discretion, he stuck her in the nearest room that didn't have a door, and left her there.

He's hoping that the decision won't come back to haunt him.

This time it is Luxord who comes to Saix's rooms -- or more accurately, Vexen's. The diviner's busy deciding whether he should make some pretense for being there or demand that X leave at once, but the gambler does nothing more than extend his hand in greeting.

"You look like a man in search of more time," is his mild remark.

Saix ignores the politeness. "Why do you say that?"

"Only that I thought I was supposed to meet for a debriefing with you about," Luxord makes a great show of consulting a pocketwatch which he conjures out of midair, "three hours ago." A click, and he has folded up the timepiece and caused it to vanish again. "Really, now, Saix. I understand that there is some leniency to be found with my _gifts_ , but..."

"I've been seeing things." Saix's voice surprises even himself, harsh and abrupt. He does not look at the gambler, but stares straight ahead instead, resolutely ignoring his own words even as he speaks them. "A part of _my_ gift, you could say. I want to know what they are."

Luxord is tactful enough to only glance about the room once, as if gathering all he'd needed to know from the half-full teapot and Saix’s state of distraction. "When did they start?"

A hundred possibilities run through Saix’s head. He weighs the worth and wisdom of each, how they sit in his mouth. He does not know where the thoughts come from, though he supposes it must be from somewhere deep inside himself where they have been left to rot. Now, like corpses in water, they float to the surface until he can no longer deny them.

There are many things Saix can say -- _when I started trying to think like a dead man_ comes foremost to his mind -- and the words dam up behind his teeth like a riverful of swelling carcasses, demanding to be freed.

But he refuses to let them out. Instead, Saix turns a question back on the gambler, the moment of indecision come and gone in an instant.

"Have you ever," he asks slowly, hesitant about the phrasing in light of their inability to feel, "regretted anything? I don't mean with a heart," he adds, loathe to get into the whole circus of emotions and not having them. "But if you believe you’ve made a mistake?"

The way Luxord stares at him, curiously, he suddenly wishes he'd asked something else. Anything else. Something about Xemnas, maybe.

"I have made a few bad gambles, in my time," Luxord answers eventually.

"What did you do about them?"

"What any practical man would, and accepted the loss -- while learning what I could from it." With a rustle of leather, Luxord lowers himself into the nearest chair, drawing in a deep breath. "Did you ever wonder why a man like me does not reverse time, Saix? Why a Gambler of Fate does not escape it?"

The question surprises Saix; in truth, he had never thought about such an ability on that kind of scale. Just as no one had expected anything out of Diviner save his skill in demolishing their enemies, Saix had only considered Luxord as a planner at best, and a dilettante otherwise. "No."

Luxord's smile is wry, and just on the edge of cynical. His wrist twists, presenting the remains of a taper candle. The stub is little better than a lump of wax with a dot for a wick on the end.

Without waiting, Luxord strikes a spark from his hand, clicking the wheel of the tiny lighter that had been palmed midway through his presentation.

"Now," he says quietly, as Saix's attention is automatically drawn towards the wan flame. "We'll see why candles aren't rewound to burn again."

\- - - - -

"Get out."

"No."

There's something familiar about this conversation, something that nags at Saix's mind and makes his brow wrinkle. The scientist is ornery -- this much he knows from experience -- so it's unaccountable why Vexen's behavior is a problem _now_ of all times.

A moment of distraction; he's not sure why. It will pass.

But as Vexen shifts minutely, turns to the side and prepares to move _away_ , it is that strange lingering sense that makes Saix's hand snap out.

He catches the door before it shuts.

"I said," he repeats, softly. " _No._ "

The ensuing argument is heard across five laboratories. When the dust settles, it is hard to determine who is the victor: Saix has a nasty case of frostbite lanced across the side of his face, but Vexen refuses to show himself in public for a week.

They meet again. They fight again. And eventually, the rest of the Organization learn that it's best to leave the two to their own devices, for they're the only ones who seem to put up with each other, which is useful enough; whenever one of them is having some sort of scientific fit or infection of brutality, their other half can at least be consulted.

The construction of the other Castle proceeds even without the scientist, as Marluxia declares that too much needs to be done to prepare for the Keyblade Master's arrival without adding the burden of having to _wait_ for those who could not swallow their pride long enough to see to the interests of the Organization. There's a sneer as he says this, of course, and Saix isn't surprised to see Vexen forming one in return, but there's a sudden pang of something in him that couldn't be called jealousy if it stood on its head and hung itself with ribbons.

He prefers to have Vexen's irritation saved for _him_ , takes a certain sort of pleasure in the knowledge that they're the only ones who can grate against each other's nerves _this much_ \-- so even before XI has turned completely away, Saix is already bulling rudely into Vexen's shoulder, under the pretense of shouldering past to leave the meeting room.

The distraction works, and Vexen turns away from staring daggers at Marluxia's back to snarl.

After all the aggression and the snide remarks, unsubtle insults and missing supplies, the next step is only logical. After Saix discovers that Vexen has bullied _his own_ berserkers into redecorating his room with _polka dots_ , the berserker suddenly finds himself seizing the other Nobody by the collar, slamming him up against the wall, snarling in his face, and then proceeding to kiss him thoroughly out of his bloated, egotistical, entirely too intellectual skull to shut him up.

It works until Vexen decides to kiss back.

Business cannot be delayed forever, of course. There are goals to be accomplished, plots to be woven, leaders to be devoured whole. Vexen packs up his supplies for the trip, grumbling about his more delicate experiments, about wasting time relocating his work, and how _impossible_ it was that Saix could have stolen every single one of his favorite socks.

When news comes back about the betrayal at Castle Oblivion, Saix blinks at the message.

"I don't have a heart," he points out simply. "What would you expect me to say?"

\- - - - - -

Saix shakes himself out of his trance, blinking as bright spots stain themselves along his retinas, blowing out his sight. Across the table, Luxord is a faintly-grinning outline of black and tan.

"No. Again," Saix orders roughly. "Try again."

\- - - - - -

The Organization doesn't joke. It's not in their nature to. Collecting hearts and building a new world is _entirely_ serious business.

That doesn't mean Xigbar can't cough about old married couples into his palm, at times, or Demyx smirk at both of them from behind a fan of cue cards. With the lack of serious opposition to their plans, hobbies fill in the bulk of the Organization’s time. The lines blur easily between Saix's life and Vexen's; the fact that they are so dissimilar is a challenge, and in the struggle of opposites, there's some entertainment to be found.

In one of Saix's dressers, tucked in the pants drawer, Vexen's inquisitive fingers lay claim to an old trinket from the berserker's past: a Windurst sun, little better than a decoration to hang on the ends of curtains or belts for good luck.

When he sees it dangling from an unused beaker ring on one of Vexen's lab benches, Saix blinks. He thinks about speaking up in protest, and finally just lets it stay there.

In the end, no one knows what to do with Kingdom Hearts after its summoning is finally complete. It hangs in the sky like a bloated, enigmatic balloon, no good to anyone and certainly no further use to them. Research on its mysteries is suddenly far less appealing now that they have reclaimed what they had lost. Risking their hearts again would be idiotic -- idiotic and certainly irreversible a second time.

Moving around the Castle is significantly harder now that their command over the remaining Dusks is slipping. Recognizing the other Organization members is even more difficult. Half of them act like Sia is some kind of monster when he first pads through the rooms, ears twitching; it's nice to have his tail back, though it still feels unfamiliar whenever it twitches against his legs, and he's not used to having to look _up_ at people now that he's shorter. He no longer looks like a Hume, and that's fine; he is no longer a Nobody, and has no reason to blend in.

Sia has a moment to spare to pity Even -- _Even_ now, not Vexen, as everyone keeps reminding each other in the tangle of their new-old names -- who would almost certainly never be able to gather up his laboratory or all his notes, piles of paper and equipment that represented years of work. It's a novel sensation, being able to pity -- and even then it is tinted, faintly, with scorn. The research on hearts will certainly do Even no good, now that the reason for their interest in it has expired. It serves no point.

When Sia comes down to the laboratories out of curiosity, shattered glass crunches under his feet. Chemicals stain the floor. All the air vents are running at full blast, and even then, they can't filter out the smell of _smoke_ , a stench that's powerful enough to cause Sia's ears to flick in a primal wariness.

He turns the final corner just in time to see why. Dry-eyed and thin-lipped, Even drops another journal into the fire in the middle of the main lab and watches it smolder.

"We're done here."

Braig's last order before they abandon the castle is to gather all valuables before they leave. The World That Never Was is already dissolving, like an ice flow in a river; small pockets of the City break away and float into the Darkness, ferrying helpless Dusks away.

The biggest challenge now waiting for the Organization is that they are once again vulnerable to the needs, to the demands, to the _wants_ of a body, multiplied and magnified by the presence of a heart. As Nobodies, it was easy to know when a pang of hunger truly meant the need for food instead of mere emotional queasiness; now that all their judgments are clouded by emotion, they begin to crave, to want things that are not truly _necessary_ for survival.

Of them all, Even is one of the most demanding and the least capable, quick to plan and slow to act. He's the one who sets Sia and Ael to the nearest river -- a stream that trickles in from the broken ocean, inexplicably running fresh instead of salt -- to stand in thigh-deep, near-freezing water to wait for unwary fish to come within reach. Ael grips one of Dilan's spears. Sia's fingernails have reverted to claws, so all he needs is his hands to capture what comes by. He never had to hunt for his own meals, back on his own world, but his Nobody had plenty of time to become a predator.

Yet there are no fish, at least not today, and after some time Ael finally speaks:

"This is idiotic."

Sia silently agrees, even though he's not really angry about the wasted efforts. Every day since recovering his heart has been uneasy; he keeps expecting that a berserker's rage is only a moment away, but the calm of his heart has settled in firmly, keeping everything neatly under control. Sedated. He's glad for that, to feel _normal_ again. Going hungry is worth the trade-off.

"You'd think that a _cat_ could catch fish." If anything, Even's disdain has become worse since Kingdom Hearts. "Maybe we should bribe you by offering a ball of string."

The muscles in Sia's tail give an automatic flick of annoyance. He thinks about fighting; as soon as he does, he thinks about _not_ fighting too, not giving in to what his Nobody would have done. Of the two, his heart wins out. He reaches for the spear. "Here, let me try."

"You're not big enough for the job," Even retorts, lips twisting up into a sneer, "We need _muscle,_ not something scrawny enough to barely hold a weapon. Shame you can't manage that any longer."

Sia looks at Even with surprise, and then there's something like a kick just behind his sternum: he realizes that he doesn't really _like_ Even as much as he could, as much as he thought he would.

Even is different from Vexen. Even has years of history that are _important_ to him, while Vexen kept his private life tightly under control. The list of differences between Somebody and Nobody continue to build the longer Sia acquaints himself with Even -- and perhaps he's building a tally of his own, a silent count of what Saix _was_ that Sia _isn't._

Sia's proud that his heritage has not faded despite his time separated from his heart. Suddenly memories _mean_ something again, in a confused doubled-set of priorities. It _matters_ that he has a home to return to -- maybe -- and a family that he thinks he wants to see, and a life that would be nice to be a part of again, even if all his sisters are bossy and he's not sure how he'd find Vana'diel yet either. It's not that he's regained lost memories; Sia remembered his world all along, but it hadn't been as important back then as it is _now_ , coloring his thoughts and influencing every decision he makes until Sia wonders how he ever could have neglected it.

The newer members of the Organization have much less of a connection between their hearts and their Nobodies. Enlear only stares at them all when they try to speak to her, trying to convince her that she was once a person they knew as _Larxene._ Yemd seems off-balance for reasons none of them are entirely certain about. Ruliama addresses them all politely, but as strangers; he does not remember anything from his time as Marluxia, though he's willing to remain cordial.

But the senior members of the Organization have a more serious history to confront. Their Nobodies were strong enough to retain some control, and they remember the events that occurred after the destruction of their homeworld.

Xehanort is the worst off. Gone is Xemnas's cold authority, Xemnas's vision. Instead, what's left behind is a creature with even fewer emotions than its Nobody; Xehanort has no passion, no intensity, and no resemblance to the man that Sia once knew.

"Your Heartless might have been missing from the others, Xehanort," Ienzo reasons. "Or otherwise unreachable. Kingdom Hearts must have given you a fresh heart to exist with. It has none of the emotions from your past."

"Do you think they'll ever come back?" Xehanort asks him plaintively, and Sia is torn between utter disgust at the Superior's helplessness, and a complete unfamiliarity with the man.

Sia tries to ask Even about it, since he knows -- journals or no -- that the scientist may be the only one of them who'll give a straight answer, too used to being brusque to step around the subject.

Even, however, only snaps. "How should I know? _I_ haven't destroyed my own heart recently, have I?"

And Sia is left to wonder if Even merely acts the way he does because he does not know what else to do, because it was in him all along, or because there was an innate darkness in what Kingdom Hearts gave in a shower of plasma and glitter, science and spellcraft.

With the exception of Xehanort -- who spends most of his time smiling and accepting whatever someone tells him -- the senior members all waver between wanting to return to Radiant Garden and realizing that doing so would be tantamount to a death sentence. Even insists, _insists_ on sticking with them, all six of them together, a communal knot of shared history that leaves the junior members on the outside.

They almost come to blows over this when the final choices have to be made. Sia tells Even that it might be better to stay away from the others for a while, at least until whatever potential revenge is out there passes. Perhaps he and Even could go together somewhere. Somewhere remote. Somewhere safe.

"And why should I listen to a glorified _pet_ anyway?" Even sneers. "You don't know _anything_ about what we have to face."

Sia draws in a deep breath, and then simply turns and walks away.

They do not say goodbye.

Ael is already gone; he was the first to leave once they'd managed to get a stable portal together, citing something about having to go check for himself on the fate of the Keyblade Masters. Sia watches the members who remain: Xehanort, smiling and laughing at something Braig has just said, Dilan perching sullenly on a chair while he cleans off his spears by hand. Ienzo is still reading. As Sia watches, Elaeus leans down to whisper something in his ear, and suddenly Ienzo grins.

Their Others may be similar to their Nobodies, but they are not the same, and in that small distinction lies everything.

He takes the next portal that opens.

Later when Sia is home again -- his family exclaims over his miraculous return, fusses over him, orders him _very sternly_ to never be captured again by the threats outside the walls -- he briefly, very briefly wonders where Even is now. If the scientist found what he was looking for. If he's still looking for it. If Even, in turn, is wondering what happened to a man he knew as Saix who became a cat called Sia, whom he didn't know at all.

He lets himself wonder, briefly: and then his mouth thins into a line, and he tells himself, before he turns back to his sister, that he doesn't care at all.

Even probably doesn't, either.

That night, he climbs up the stairs to his comfortable bedroom, in his comfortable house where everything is provided to him along with a stack of angry, overdue notices from the breeding council. He sleeps on a mattress soft enough to cradle him from head to toe, with sheets clean and fresh as the sea. In the morning, he is examined by physicians and white mages, given a clean stamp of approval as a healthy Mithra male, and then he is back to his old life completely.

Years later, a battered letter makes its way into his quarter of the city, a curt missive borne by a strange dwarf -- like a black moogle without a pompom, as one of his sisters describes it -- and Sia takes it carefully.

When he unfolds the sheet of paper, something slips to the floor -- or would have, if his reflexes had not caught it in an eyeblink. Familiar edges dig into his palm. Under the grime, a familiar surface glistens, and he recognizes the Windurst sun-charm he had saved so long ago.

The message is brief and to the point. _He said to give it back to you if he ever passed away._

Sia blinks.

Then his youngest daughter is tugging on his tail, and demanding to know why daddy has something interesting, why isn't he showing everyone, and why is it _fair_ that Cheeia got a new set of lockpicks without having to _share?_

Sia ruffles her hair, giving the sun-charm to her to play with instead.

She promptly loses it five minutes later, but by then, he's already tossed the letter into the trash.

\- - - -

"No. Again."

\- - - -

Shadows have eaten his home, and Asi has hidden himself in one of last tower turrets that remain untainted.

The monsters are closing in. He can feel it.

Suddenly the shadows around him stir and shudder, rippling with the promise of birthing more of the dark monsters that already prowl the fields and floors below. Asi has a sword in his hands, one that served his father well in older wars -- but did nothing to protect the father from _these_ creatures, and it will not serve the son any better.

Asi's hand clutches tightly around the grip when the darkness rises from the floor, swelling in a tide ready to crush him under.

He closes his eyes and waits to die.

But it never comes.

The temperature of the air around him drops, and there's a wet thud as something is kicked away. Suddenly he's being taken by the hand, pulled to his feet, urged to _run._

"My name is Even," says a voice, and it takes Asi a moment to register green eyes and the light brown hair that matches it. There's a bow slung across his back and ice rimming the boy’s lashes. "Can you walk? We need to get you out of here, and I'm not carrying you. _Come on._ "

Asi asks who his saviors are later, when he's gathered enough control to follow the archer through the corridors of his family's keep. They're looking for survivors, but he's starting to think they won't find any. He resorts to questions to distract himself from that particular thought, sword still shakily in hand.

"We're -- well, we're an organization," Even replies, as they pad down one staircase. Shadows rustle further down; Even nocks one arrow and lets it fly, glistening inside a magical coating of ice. "The Organization of the Mouse. Braig likes to call us Mouseketeers, though, even _if_ he's the only one who uses a musket. If you’ve got nothing left for you here, do you want to come along?"

They grow twelve-strong, while Mickey hunts desperately for the one he claims is their thirteenth: Sora, a Keyblade Master in his own right, lost on a quest to save Princess Kairi. The king of Even's world had vanished several years ago, looking for the Heartless; no one has seen Ansem the Wise, but they find his notes on occasion, tiny scraps of paper that Xehanort clutches in his hands before very carefully smoothing them out and collecting them in a leatherbound case.

"It's alright," Xehanort tells them after one particularly fruitless campaign into the northern woods, and because it's Xehanort speaking, they believe him.

There's something about the man that inspires the most wordless kind of confidence. Even puts it best: "We'd follow him anywhere," he tells Asi.

"Why?" Asi is watching the archer restring his bow, and he's only half-listening.

It's enough of a question to make Even pause and actually think about an answer. "I suppose it's because he believes in what he's doing. And he doesn't hide it. You know where he stands, always. There's a kind of trust in that."

Dilan, who's tuned into the conversation halfway through, shakes his head. "That's not it," he corrects. "It's because he's never been afraid."

Braig sums it up a different way later, when Asi is pressed up against a tree and arrows are sliding through the branches, back and forth, their physical weapons fencing with those of the Heartless. "Y'ever see one of the cannons at work?"

Asi is busy trying to restring his longbow; it's an impossible task when he's cramped against the tree, contorting his limbs to try and flex the bow into a curve. "What?"

"The experimental mako cannon things." Braig grunts. There's the sharp crack of a gun, and the smell of powder floating back through the underbrush. "One of those goes off, you don't want to be anywhere near the things. Safest place to be is behind 'em. If you see the field where a cannon's been, you know you're safe walking there, because there's nothing left behind.” A tearing of paper, and Braig’s shaking another dose of powder into the musket’s priming pan. "Xehanort's like that. If things had turned out differently, he'd be one hell of a force for Darkness."

"But they didn't," Asi finds himself saying, an insistence that feels clumsy for some reason, as if he's arguing in the wrong language. "He's still with us."

Braig scoops up his ammunition bag and gives it a shake; Donald always yells when they leave the paper of the cartridges behind, complaining about waste and resources. "Yeah. He is. Doesn't make him any less dangerous, though. Look for where the ground's been torn up and destroyed -- that's where he's been, and that means it's safe."

The conversation breaks off there, as they hear Ienzo singing out the all-clear for this area of the wood; Braig grins briefly at Asi before scrambling out of the foliage, and Asi returns to Even's post, dodging magic and shrapnel as he weaves his way back to safety.

Their love is the love of battlefields, the kind of connection shared only between those who have stood together in sprays of spells and arrows and gore, stood behind and beside and back to back, covering each other's weaknesses as neatly as dancers responding to the subtle cants of their partner's form. There is no time for more than the roughest intimacy, if any of them had time to even think about such instincts. More often than not, they prefer to spend their time together asleep, curled together like exhausted hounds or dozing cats or lost boys.

Sometimes, Even shivers.

Sometimes, Asi does.

Either way, they say nothing until the dawn breaks, and even then they do nothing more than confirm that they are still themselves and the other is alive.

Around them, all the Mouseketeers do the same, in the strange, quiet partnerships they've formed: Dilan touches Xehanort by the shoulder to wake him, he's always been a late sleeper, and Ralene is already mounted on Elaeus' shoulders, using the man as an impromptu watchtower as she scans for danger. Donald and Goofy are always together, always floating around the camp. Ienzo chats amiably with Dyme and Lea -- light-footed and mobile as they are, the three spend the most time on scouting and reconnaissance out of all of them, and Asi can hear jests about the declining quality of the campfire meals twining smoothly with discussion about the next ideal place to make an easily-defensible camp.

Of them all, it is in fact only Lauriam who lacks a partner, who cannot find another soul to counterbalance his and serve as an anchor during times of duress. Then again, he doesn’t seem to need the support. Lauriam is a farmer-turned-warrior, taking up his scythe to reap his vengeance when the Heartless consumed his village. When he is in doubt, he turns to the security of ritual comfort, the million and one tiny superstitions that do nothing but reassure. Only let raindrops hit your head an even number of times. Put your left sleeve on before your right. Stir your stew counterclockwise, eat with your weaker hand.

Strange Lauriam. Lauriam the loner, who walks by himself and does not join into the conversations when they speak about the power of the Dusks, only watching them all with a private, inscrutable gaze.

During the mornings as they gather themselves for the next stage in their campaigns, it’s always Mickey and Xehanort who wake up first. The latter coaxes the campfires back into healthy flames; the mouse king, on the other hand, tastes the hotpot and wonders aloud at the lack of pepper. They speak often together. Xehanort always asks Mickey if there has been any other signs of Ansem, and the mouse king always shakes his head, sobers, and then quickly steers the conversation back towards the creature known as DiZ. They know little about the dangers they face, apart from the renegade Keyblade Master and his mysterious advisor; whether it is DiZ manipulating Riku, or Riku using DiZ, no one is quite certain. There is an unnatural fusion, that much they _do_ know, with Shadows and Dusks working together despite being polar opposites.

Instead, the uncertainty is filled up with Donald's constant protests, Goofy's good-hearted laughter. And that horrible, horrible, _catchy_ marching tune that Dyme composed around the fire one evening, and then sang it until it was all lodged firmly in their heads.

 _Who's the leader of us all, a friend to you and me..._

They fight against shadows, against dusky beings, against their own fears and hesitations. Of the available threats, the Dusks are the worse menace: they do not claim hearts like the Shadows, but kill their victims outright. At least with the Heartless, there is still hope.

After a week-long campaign on the Fields of Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Even helps Asi sew his own flag at last, gathering together scraps from around the camp supplies to form an irregular blue length of cloth, marked with a white crescent moon.

"'We'll do things and we'll go places,'" the archer murmurs, finishing off a stitch, reciting the verse like an incantation against harm. "'All around the world, we'll go marching.' There," he announces, and thrusts it out towards Asi. "'Forever let us hold our banners high.'"

Asi knows enough by now to answer him with the next line, repeating the words again and again in the only promise that matters these days: "High, high, high."

It's during a rare quiet time between skirmishes that Asi finds a way to repay Even for what he's taught him, for the tricks and secrets that make life on the road easier to bear.

"You've never learned how to?" he asks; perhaps his voice is more incredulous than it sounds, because Even flushes faintly before he turns away, folding his arms in the gesture that Asi's learned is his only defense. "Oh, come on -- don't start sulking."

"I didn't exactly have a reason to," Even mutters, glaring at Asi peevishly for the second comment. "Braig tried to teach me, but..." he shrugs. "That's why I have these instead." The archer pats the packet of signal whistles he keeps strung in a bandolier around his chest -- eagle, loon, hawk, kite; the voices of countless birds are kept there, mute and trapped in wood until someone breathes them into life.

In a sudden burst of gallantry, Asi reaches for one of them. "Here, I'll teach you."

Unfortunately, he quickly discovers the reason Braig stopped trying to show Even how to whistle unaided: even the weakest attempt sounds like a strangled duck. By the end of the afternoon, though, Asi's fingers are streaked with spit from trying to demonstrate, they're laughing hard enough to cry and Even's signal no longer sounds like dying waterfowl.

The memory is enough to keep a smile on Asi's face as they fight through the next wave of Heartless.

One night, they're all sitting exhausted around the fire. Dyme's the one who starts it: lips cracking, chapped, the side of his chin smeared with bowstring suet. _M, I, C,_ he croaks, and has to cough -- but then Lea has the tune, smirking it out with his customary mockery. He lifts his hands with deliberate care and gives a clap with each letter, a dull leather metronome counting out the battle cry until they're all chanting, all singing, all finding it in themselves to last another day.

When the stanzas about the King grow stale, Dyme turns to improvisation. He writes and rewrites the verses on a piece of foolscap scavenged out of Ienzo's mapmaking supplies, the plain sheet already scored through with blots of spilt ink by the time the bard gets to it. By the time dinner's over, Dyme's worked through four stanzas with no clear sign of progress, and eventually appeals to the others for advice.

Even lifts a skeptical, wary eyebrow. "Well, let's see what you have."

Dyme clears his throat, formally, and begins to recite:

 _He's dark of face and light of hair  
And eyes as gold as day!  
Whenever we need to forge ahead,  
It's he who paves the way!_

 _He'll grin and tease and laugh aloud  
And never quite play fair!  
But every scar on him was earnt  
The cost he'll never share!_

 _He walks on wind and through the rain  
To keep us from the cold!  
I'd trust him best to watch my back  
'Cause he's brave and strong and bold!_

 _His temper'd spook the Dusks, alright,  
If they had hearts to cow!  
But since they don't, he'll have to take  
His bow and teach them how! -- now! -- how!_

Even cuts Dyme off before he can finish recomposing the last verse. "That's enough," he grumbles, exasperated. "Don't you have patrol duty to do?"

"You're just jealous that he couldn't find anything vainglorious to say about you," Asi says, slyly.

Even swats at his head, but Asi ducks away, laughing, and Dyme gathers his papers and the war is successfully forgotten for yet another evening, another day.

They lose Xehanort eventually, without even realizing it -- a single stray report about Sherwood Forest is all it takes. Donald and Goofy are been positioned further ahead as scouts, and the King's magician sends back a hurried report one afternoon about how Riku’s forces have broken through to King Richard's borders, along with one other ominous postscript:

One of the Heartless Commanders had enough time to giggle the name _Ansem_ before it died in a pile of insects and burlap, deflating like a soiled balloon.

Xehanort's gone before anyone thinks to stop him, running to the front lines or maybe to the vanguard's flank, or maybe to -- they don't know where, but they can guess. Then Dilan and Braig go chasing after him, determined to catch the boy before he gets too far, and the Mouseketeers are down by three.

Asi's eyes have grown sharp now. His other senses are even better, primed for battle and the smell of blood, so when Even starts to fidget and glance towards the front lines, Asi stops him first.

"You'd be the fourth lost."

Even attempts a brief denial; he looks away and then squares his shoulders. "I don't know what you're talking about."

Asi holds up one hand in warning, palm upright and knuckles clenched. Then, once he has Even's attention, he opens his fingers to count off a silent tally, one to three. "The list is already too long," he concludes once he's reached the end. "I won't let you become Number Four, just to get yourself killed."

Even's face closes like a door, like a fist, like one of those artichokes he is forever dreaming aloud about. "Riku will kill us all anyway," he snaps, whirling away. Trapped in the small bunker, the archer paces across the cramped storeroom. "It's only a matter of time."

"Sora will be able to rescue Princess Kairi. He wields the Key of Destiny -- "

"If Sora could save her, he'd have done so by now." Even's voice is sharp and testy, full of shards like broken glass and -- this takes Asi a moment to register -- something more subtle: fear. "All we're doing now is holding ground, hanging onto what we can." His face twists up like a child's. "But we're _losing_ , Asi. Every day our borders grow smaller."

As if he's given up on trying to escape his anxiety, Even shudders and lets himself collapse onto the edge of his own bunk, burying his face into his hands. "What happens when we can't hold them off, Asi?" His voice is a thin rasp, openly vulnerable in a time when none of them can afford to be. "What happens when we die?"

Asi has no answers, so he does the only thing he can do, now: reach out and wrap his arms around Even's trembling shoulders until they both stop talking about destruction, and all that's left is a bone-deep weariness.

Their team is split off on the One-Hundred Acre Wood. In the distance, Dyme's and Lea's banners goes down -- there one minute, scraps of brightly-colored cloth stained on the corners from old battles, and then torn right off the towers they were stationed to defend. Elaeus is bellowing bitter vows downstairs as he reinforces the front gates, muscling logs to barricade the doors in a futile defense -- the Shadows will just crawl over the walls if they're thwarted at the gates, and if they cannot climb the walls, they will walk _through_ them. Ienzo's spells leave a harsh tang on the air as he chants. There's a flash of yellow hair slipping through the buildings below, enough to catch Asi's attention as he leans out a window and realizes that Ralene is _here_ instead of out on the front lines, and if her patrol has fallen back this far, then the entire west quadrant must be overrun --

And then the Dusks are there, erupting from the _center_ of their defenses somehow, spilling out from the heart of the keep. Even has enough time to babble aloud about how impossible that is, how someone would have to have intimate knowledge of the inner wards to breach them that neatly, and then they're all too busy scrambling for cover. Heartless-created explosives fly over the walls from both directions, sending up showers of mortar and stone on impact.

"Hold them off until King Mickey returns!" Asi hears, and then another voice wishing that Ansem the Wise would come home, and then Asi's hands are on his sword and Creepers are everywhere, white bodies mixing with black in the streets. In the distance, he can hear Dyme's voice screaming letters in a thin, reedy defiance -- _K, E, Y,_ echoes over and over in the wrong order as Dyme messes up and repeats and refuses to fall silent, and Ais almost wants to pick up the chant himself, bellowing out their only battle song.

He fights and curses and leaves Even and Lauriam behind together, two archers with a dwindling supply of arrows to pepper the air.

Asi takes the stairs down two at a time, his feet sliding and stuttering on the landings. He reaches the gate in time, skidding to a halt just as the Shadows breach the lower gates after all, boiling through the wards which crack louder than Braig's gunshots.

"Hold them _off_ ," Elaeus is ordering, strong as a mountain as he lifts his arms against the first wave. They spill over his body like glistening, liquid ticks.

Asi readies his sword as the Shadows approach; there are not many of the Organization present to defend the gates, but they must stand fast. They dare not falter. If they fail, then there is only one line of defense left to stem the tide, and by then the Darkness will have already gained access to the roads. Even and Lauriam will have to hold the inner fort against the Dusks on their own. They must.

Asi fights like he never has before. Shadows dissipate into smoke under his blade. Dusks part before him as if they're no more than a sea of feathers before the weight of his sword. Fury propels him forward, drives him through the gate in increments of two, three, four steps; he hears something snap and thinks distantly that it might have been the bone of his little finger, but spares it no more than a thought. It's not important: all that matters now is making certain the Shadows don't reach Even, because Even has the _worst_ opening in his defense on his right flank and Asi has had to cover for him hundreds of times before, and maybe, maybe if he holds the gate long enough or ignores enough pain or just manages to _defeat the Heartless forever_ , then maybe they'll both live to see just one more morning --

The first ray of sunset burnishes the sky a dull red.

Then a whistle cuts across the field, echoing down from the towers behind him -- sharp and high and familiar and desperate -- and Asi, Asi _knows_ this is the last time he will ever hear that sound in his life.

He turns back.

Even dies anyway.

\- - - - - - -

When Saix arrives in Radigarden, the first thing he does is examine the local listings for a place to stay. He's not particularly picky about living conditions, save that the place be clean enough not to have cockroaches crawling all over his face when he sleeps. What matters is that it's affordable -- and considering his budget, that leaves him with a very limited range of options, and he doesn't look forward to having to comb through the neighborhood for a place that isn't ridiculously overpriced or seedy.

Luck must be smiling on him, because the moment he steps into the fourth apartment, he knows it's the one he wants.

The only problem is that he isn't the only one who wants it.

They strike a deal, the other man and him. Saix gets the room with the balcony because his newfound roommate claims to dislike the sun, which makes Saix wonder briefly about vampirism. He doesn't have much in the way of supplies, so he gladly cedes the storage room; each evening, Saix can hear the busy activity within as the rattling of construction projects nearly sends glasses crashing off the counter.

He gets two-thirds of the bathroom, on the justification that he possesses more toiletries -- shaving, for one; the other man seems to wake up clean-cut every morning and he has no idea how -- and needs the space for them. The blonde coughs something about metrosexuality into his hand, which Saix ignores.

Considering appearances, Saix’s roommate hardly in a position to talk. Despite the worn red flannel and patched jeans, his frame is almost delicate, and even with his hair pulled back as it is, Saix can tell it's thick and luxuriant. Briefly he wonders what it would be like to tug his fingers through it, then discards the thought instantly.

Duct tape to delineate personal bounds is ridiculous, and something Saix privately thought only happened in movies, but the trail of dull silver that winds its way through the living room and up the wall -- glistening like the trail some strange metallic slug has left behind-- is unmistakably there, and refusing to disappear no matter how long he looks at it.

Things get worse when the agent comes in to cheerfully inform them that the furniture in the apartment isn't actually part of what they're paying for, meaning that they're both left with a single mattress to share between them.

Saix spares a moment to contemplate the option of protest, but his roommate is already groaning, dragging the mattress over to the only shared space it will fit: the middle of the living room. Then the bed, too, gets tape on it, slicing it in half and sticking it to the floor in one fell swoop. Saix eyes the entire setup a bit askance, but fails to comment. If the other man insists on being a prude about personal space, so be it.

The first night sleeping on the same bed he discovers, to some dismay, that this prudishness is limited solely to conscious moments: his roommate has a habit of hogging the covers, and by morning Saix's back and sides are sore from being pummeled by bony limbs.

He relocates himself to the floor the next night.

Afterwards, when his back is stiff and screaming with dull points of agony -- and all he can think of are Demyx's stupid homeopathic admonishments about chiropractic health and the integrity of one's spine affecting other organs -- Saix flops back on the mattress to sleep, resolute that he can put up with double-bunking if he has to.

It's not until that first week passes that he thinks to ask for the other man's name, and the blonde calmly offers him a hand that's never seen the stain of nicotine, faintly callused with manual labor. Somehow, that doesn't seem right -- the digits are better suited for finer jobs than mopping and plumbing, but Saix doesn't comment on the disparity, taking the hand in his and shaking it carefully.

His roommate does not return the favor, gripping his fingers with the strength and confidence of one used to saying what he wants, whenever he wants it. "The name is Vexen."

Saix has no idea what Vexen does for a living. He doesn't even realize they work at the same _school_ until he glimpses a familiar-looking pair of jeans and an even more familiar pair of skinny legs clad in them sticking out from under one of the cafeteria sinks. It's such a disconcerting, bizarre sight that he pauses, distracted from his attempt to raid the school refrigerators for whatever edible material actually remains in them. Not quite consciously, he finds his feet turning towards the sink, plodding step by step until they reach the legs, and then he comes to a stop, staring down.

The first thing Saix says is, "Those are my pants."

The second thing Saix says is, "They don't fit you very well."

The third thing Saix says is, "You know, you could have asked first."

All Vexen replies is: "Can you pass me the monkey wrench?"

Saix sighs, but he fishes it out of the toolbox and hands it over anyway.

He comes home a week later to find that the power is out, and Vexen informs him with sarcastic cheeriness that this untimely outage is guaranteed to last indefinitely -- depriving them of air-conditioning in the process. Demyx had warned that the city's power grid wasn't the most stable, but Saix was used to brushing off whatever the yoga instructor said; he, for one, didn't believe in _feng shui_ or the horoscope or whatever fad the other man was chasing that day.

The nights are sweaty and hot, and both of them sleep without bothering with sheets, stripping down to boxers and shirts, and then just boxers -- and finally to nothing, averting their eyes from each other out of desperate politeness while dripping cold washcloths on themselves, hoping for relief.

Contact between them begins as a matter of practicality, mutual satisfaction, simply because there isn't a way to take care of _business_ in an apartment like this without the other knowing about it. Saix would not have started it himself, if he were given a choice. He prefers to grit his teeth and suffer in silence rather than admit to a loss of control, but when the time comes, he isn't given the option: by the time he's been aware of waking up from a half-realized dream involving three giggling redheads, someone is already pressed up against his back, a hot arm snaking around his waist and a gentle hand bringing him off.

Saix doesn't enjoy being in debt, and he likes being taken advantage of even _less_ \-- so the moment his muscles stop trembling, he rolls right over and fishes his fingers along Vexen's leg, hunting to return the favor.

It's not a difficult task. Vexen's already half-hard, and with only the summer moonlight washing over them, bathing them both in monochrome, he isn't unattractive either.

When the sun yawns through the apartment windows, Saix is already brushing his teeth in the bathroom. The door opens; Saix tenses, but Vexen only brushes past, yawning and scratching an itch as he reaches for his own toothbrush.

"Look," Saix says, taking the initiative just in case. "It wasn't. What we did. Just so you know, I'm not some kind of fa _aaargh!_ "

"Did you use up _all_ of the toothpaste?" Vexen interjects mildly, even as he grinds his foot down harder on the bones of Saix's toes. "Is that even humanly possible, or did you just eat it?"

Sleep that night is intensely uncomfortable, not just because Saix tries to keep himself on the furthest edge of the mattress, but also because his boxers feel far too tight for comfort. He grits his teeth and refuses to roll over onto his back, to get any closer to Vexen's prone form than he has to.

At 3 a.m., he finally gets up to handle the problem in the bathroom himself.

One hand on the sink, jaw set in a grimace as he tries to keep his mind clear of anything save pleasure, only his thoughts keep drifting back to various temptations: images of other hands on him, fine-boned fingers and blond hairs.

Unbidden, his hand jerks at the thought, and he hisses a curse, trying desperately to envision something else.

"Stupid frathouse idiot," he hears, and then before he can do so much as deny anything, a bizarre mix of shame and self-righteous pride telling him that he should tell Vexen to get out -- or, more horrifyingly, apologize profusely for fantasizing about him while under the same roof -- Vexen comes up behind him, one hand wrapping around his waist. "Just get over your antiquated hangups so we both can sleep."

Saix's muscles go slack against Vexen's weight, leaning into the support; mercifully, with his eyes closed, he can't see the figures reflected in the mirror.

The surrender is almost welcome.

He wants to feel dirty, and angry, and _violated_ for the liberties that Vexen has taken, and succeeds for all of three weeks -- three weeks spent stomping around and glaring indiscriminately at things, ignoring how Vexen is drinking milk straight out of the carton in revenge. But the heat saps at his energy; the evenings spent sleepless gnaw at his logic, and once practicality sets in, claiming that it's _useful_ this way if only to get a night's sleep, Saix gives up.

Eventually, as time passes, Saix begins to stop thinking of what they're doing in terms of what's right and what isn't, in the terms that society gives it. It's simply what it is: two people learning to deal.

The same standard applies to his job. The staff at the high school share a common room because Xemnas believes in equal opportunity in all things, particularly in the school budget. Science teachers cram up against grammar teachers. The mathematics professors wage a subtle war involving chairs each week, and despite his best efforts, Saix can't keep a stapler on his desk to save his life.

One day by the staffroom's only water cooler, Saix inadvertently eavesdrops on a conversation in full-swing. The words only catch his attention because Vexen's name is mentioned; then he gravitates closer, not even trying to hide his interest.

"He has to be the most well-educated janitor the school systems have ever seen," Zexion muses aloud, stirring sugar in his tea. Saix has yet to actually see the school doctor do anything other than carry a clipboard around; the majority of bandaids and painkillers seem to be dispensed mainly by Lexaeus, the head nurse. As Saix steps closer, Zexion turns towards him, as if consulting on a thought. "Did you know, Vexen actually has degrees in Chemistry and Latin?"

Saix hadn't, actually, so he stays silent and lets Zexion go on.

Zexion takes the spoon out and sets it on the top of the water cooler. "It's just _typical_ of him not to perform up to expectations."

Lexaeus shakes his head at the shorter man, automatically relocating the dirty spoon to the trash. "He didn't choose the job."

"Well, Xemnas had to stick him _somewhere_. Favor between old friends, and all." Zexion tosses his hair, absently; Saix thinks the man needs a haircut, so that he'll stop twitching his head like a stung horse. "I suppose he failed at DiZiney, so he'd rather hide away forever -- "

"He's not like that." Saix speaks before he realizes he's drawn breath.

Zexion only looks amused. "How would you know anything?" It's not angry; just matter-of-fact. "You didn't grow up with him. We did."

No, Saix thinks, but Zexion probably hasn't slept with Vexen either -- and as soon as _that_ assumption crosses his head, he also realizes that he never wants to be proven wrong about it, either.

Instead, Saix only grabs his stopwatch off his desk and heads out the door to his next class, letting the words swim around his head all through softball practice.

Zexion is wrong, Saix knows, because Vexen is the proudest creature he's ever met, for all the grease on his elbows and the grime in his hair: he can't imagine him scraping for a second option, ever. How someone so disheveled can look so haughty is beyond his understanding, but it's true anyway.

When he gets home, Vexen already has a pot of bachelor's stew on the boil, chopping up random vegetables to toss in once the meat has softened enough to be edible. It's his turn to handle their meals this week, and Saix's stomach growls at the smell of cooking food, but the angry hunger doesn't translate into an actual appetite.

"It'll take another fifteen minutes for dinner," Vexen announces, without looking over his shoulder. "More, if I can't figure out if the onions are edible."

"Latin," Saix responds, and watches the other man's back stiffen. "You never told me."

" _Homines libenter quod volunt credunt_ ," Vexen quips back, the syllables clicking off his tongue smoothly enough. "It wasn't important."

Saix doesn't know why he's annoyed; it's not as if he has a _personal_ investment in the man, but something in him snaps. "Why do you choose to stay like this, cleaning a high school that you don't even teach at? Is failure that important?"

The wooden spoon slides out of the stew. Vexen sets it aside, very carefully. "Did anyone ever tell you that you ruin all illusions of intelligence whenever you bellow like that?"

Without quite noticing it, Saix has moved forward, coming to a halt in arm's reach of the stove, staring hard at the back of Vexen's neck. Distantly, he realizes he's been shouting, and that everyone two floors up _and_ down can probably hear his voice thunder through the painfully thin ceilings.

Vexen turns to stare at him with an expression that he can't read. "Why do you care?"

Somehow, that's the worst thing the other man could have said, and Saix snarls. _"Idiot."_

He lunges forward, as if he'd pin a direct answer out of the blonde with his body if not his words, but Vexen's already greeting him, meeting him, and his frustration finds itself abruptly aborted.

They barely have the presence of mind to switch the stove off while they're busy fighting with each other's hands -- Saix isn't even sure which one of them reached for the knob, but he manages to be grateful for that, when he's not busy being grateful for _other_ things.

Life settles down with surprising ease. They're both awful at cooking, and they still fight over the covers, but now at least he can borrow extra socks when his own are all dirty. Vexen is not allowed access to Saix's shaving razor, which is good because the blonde never seems to need one anyway. The attempt to teach Vexen how to play soccer is a spectacular failure, but he manages to kick the ball at Saix's head every time, so there's probably room to improve.

"What's wrong?" Saix asks one afternoon when he hears the door bang open, and Vexen’s shoes hit the wall when they’re kicked off. There's nothing about the routine noises that suggest anything particularly different, but if there is anything Saix knows how to do, it is how to pay attention for small, subtle signs of discontent.

That, and the trails of paint sprayed across Vexen like slug trails -- red-pink-yellow-green, all bright and loud -- are hard to miss.

"Damned kids again," the janitor grumbles. "The Destiny gang, or whatever _ridiculous_ name they've taken to calling themselves this time. Sora's far too much of a well-meaning idiot, but once Riku gets something into his head, it's all over."

With that, Vexen falls silent. What Saix can tell, however, is that the man's pride is more stung than he'd like to admit. Unbidden, unasked, he gets to his feet and slinks over to where Vexen's collapsed into a chair, settling his hands carefully on the blonde's shoulders.

Vexen doesn't snap upright, but Saix can feel muscles tense under his touch.

He doesn't acknowledge it. "Want help washing up?" is all he murmurs, an offer that's an admission in itself.

The way Vexen stares at him from the corner of his eye is still wary, but he nods. "Yes. Please."

The next day, Saix takes almost casually vicious pleasure in giving Sora and his friends ten extra laps around the track -- and for Riku, solo detention.

They go out for dinner afterwards as a confused form of victory, and end up at one of the better theme restaurants than the diners they can afford on their communal budget. The waitress flips open her pad as she swings by their table, already primed with the daily specials, both carefully rustic even though the prices are not: "Shepherd's pie, or beef lasagna?"

The inquiry is brisk, and Saix isn't sure what to answer. Vexen smoothly covers his slack, ordering the meal for both of them.

"Why are you so nervous?" Vexen inquires calmly, arching a brow at the death-hold Saix has on his cutlery. "It's just dinner."

 _Yes_ , Saix thinks, but it's dinner _in public_ , at a _restaurant_ , at the kind of place that has words like ambience and atmosphere and haute couture in the newspaper reviews about it. Even if the host at the door didn't give them too much of an evil eye about coming in wearing jeans and T-shirts, he still feels horribly out of place. Obviously there's also the matter that they're essentially on a date, but he tries to pretend that's not what's making him antsy, even _if_ the _same host_ might have been giving them the same evil eye because Vexen had just carelessly reached across the table to straighten Saix's collar.

 _Oh god,_ Saix thinks as the food arrives and he checks it for signs of tampering, _the last thing I need right now is someone thinking we're **together** , or making stupid jokes, or breaking the window of my **car** in the parking lot..._

He's so busy envisioning a world of furious humiliation that he nearly misses what Vexen is saying, and only one word snaps him out of it. "...teaching."

"What?"

"Maybe," Vexen says hesitantly, "Maybe I'll give it another try. There are openings for part-time at the Prideland College. I could renew my credentials."

Saix stops with a forkful of pasta halfway to his mouth, and waits.

Vexen pauses before he speaks again. "You're right. I'll turn in my resignation at the end of the month. Xemnas will understand."

The rest of the week is spent in a blur of school bells ringing the class periods in and out. Accidents happen every day when Saix is a gym teacher -- one kid sprains her ankle, Roxas forgets his inhaler again -- but serious injuries are a rarity, and he's proud of that. Running class on autopilot means that he gives all his kids a few laps around the track with nothing more risky than a muscle stitch to watch out for, so when he hears a screech of tires in the distance and a high-pitched scream, he knows it can't be one of his students.

He turns his head even as a sick feeling hits his stomach. He's not sure what happened, but the sensation is enough to propel him forward, and then he's vaulted the short fence around the track field, leaving mud and grass stains everywhere while he runs.

There's a knot of concerned students and teachers there on the sideroad into the parking lot. A crazy spiderweb pattern decorates the front of the car's windshield, and the kid who was driving looks dazed, leaning against the bumper with one hand to his head and the keys dangling from the other. His blonde girlfriend's pacing back and forth, angry and shrill. Saix recognizes them distantly: two art students with tattoos and a penchant for piercings who always like to skip their swimming laps.

Vexen is a horrible, crumpled mass on the ground.

There's blood, and wiring and broken glass and a red dampness that's leaking in the vicinity of Vexen's skull, matting the blond hairs, and before Saix knows it, he's pushed past the crowd and is kneeling on the ground, desperately trying to remember the details of spinal injury.

Vexen's mouth twitches. His lungs struggle, and then force out a croak.

Saix glares, because it's the only thing he can think to do, other than press a hand to the bleeding. "Stop trying to talk. Just lie still for now."

"I don't..." Vexen's lips move again and Saix has to lean in to hear, desperate to catch what the other man considers important enough to spare his breath on.

"I don't..." he repeats, shuddering. "I don't want to _die._ " Then dignity reasserts itself, just enough, and Vexen sneers weakly, "Not to something as stupid as _this._ "

"Don't be an idiot," Saix retorts hotly, because it _is_ stupid, stupid as one of the sitcoms Demyx likes to endlessly babble about, where people die in overly contrived ways right as they're about to find happiness. "If you're still talking, the worst that'll happen is you'll be paralyzed."

The corner of Vexen’s mouth pulls up. "That's not... not exactly reassuring."

"So?"

Saix waits there as the ambulance comes, Vexen's hand clasped firmly in his own, ignoring all the whisperings and gawkings and commentary from the kids on the sidelines when they see the gym teacher and the janitor together.

He bullies his way past three nurses at the Neverland hospital, ignoring the restrictions of family members only -- as far as he can go until the ICU looms and even Saix knows better than to enter _that_ , so all he can do is sit outside on the thin bench and wait. One of the nurses asks him, carefully, if he can fill out any of the paperwork for his friend, and Saix completes the forms with automatic briskness, not hesitating on the date of birth, family registration number, and emergency contact information. He writes in his own billing information, signing agreement for medical treatment costs -- anything and everything that might make Vexen be seen faster by the doctors, seen and fixed.

He shoves the clipboard back to the nurse, dimly aware that she’s been protesting the liberties he’s been taking by filling out information that only Vexen should have known, but Saix is too tired to care.

Vexen never wakes up.

At the memorial ceremony -- which lasts only eight minutes long -- the Principal makes his attempt at a statement. "He was a good contributor to our school," Xemnas offers, looking vaguely awkward as he clasps the edges of the podium, one finger worrying at a chip. "It was a shame to have lost him. Please welcome our new janitor, Marluxia."

Saix stands there, his skin vaguely numb and humming underneath his clothes as the chattering press of students sweeps out, followed by clots of teachers and staff. They leave behind an empty gym, a broom, and Saix.

At home, an overdue notice about the rent from the landlord is tacked to the door. Saix tears it down mechanically, tossing it onto the counter. A few of the braver hospital bills have already trickled in, stuffing the mailslot in the door with itemized lists detailing each useless expense. There's a polite, but firm letter from one of the educational districts calling him into a meeting concerning the paranoia of the PTA about gym teachers and lifestyle choices.

The death leaves him feeling surprisingly hollow, as if he's forgotten he should retain emotion about it. As the week goes by, no one asks about what happened to Vexen or what _will_ happen to Saix, or what will happen to the apartment and the job and the school; after days go by of nothing, Saix realizes that the world has already moved on.

\- - - -

By the time Saix bothers to go down to Vexen's rooms, it is well after the review of the rest of the victims. He spent extra time annotating Lexaeus's quarters, but there is no rush, no schedule; Castle Oblivion has finished its deathtoll, and the Keyblade Master has disappeared anyway.

There is nothing in Vexen's chambers save books and dust. Saix spends the afternoon cataloging the scientist's studies, and then folds up the tally into his pocket, preparing to go.

At the door, he finds himself pausing unaccountably, looking back into the sullen rooms -- as if there was something he had forgotten, something he should be aware of.

Then he realizes that he's simply late for dinner, and closes the door behind him.


	3. The Ghost That Never Was and the Future That Will Never Be

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Even as his time runs out, the diviner finds room for regret. The conclusion to the Cats series.

He breaks out of the last vision early -- still disoriented, still out of place, as if the visions have dislodged him permanently from his proper time. Familiarity comes in waves. The balcony feels strange, then normal, then strange again, as if the very pulse of his blood is out of tune or off-key. Something is missing. Nothing is missing. Everything is just right enough to be wrong.

He spares a moment to wonder if this is what Luxord feels like _all the time_ , and then he wakes fully.

If it can be considered waking. Saix's senses are saturated with the dullness of fog and the lying sweetness of honey. Vehement denials linger sharp on his lips. Only seeing Luxord's calm stare makes Saix swallow them down, but they find their way past his throat and into the space where his heart should be, rebounding and echoing off the cavity's walls until the sound is multiplied a hundred thousand times over, drowning out all other thought.

It's not frustration that fuels the urge to know. It _can't_ be frustration without a heart; it can't be hope either. And the third option -- helplessness -- is even worse.

"What _was_ that?" Saix demands aloud, forcing his brain to work. He doesn't know if what he experienced was a manifestation of Time, of Fate -- of Divination or of the madness brought on by a heart-shaped moon. What he saw might have been a creation of his own powers or of Luxord's, or a horrific melding between the two that never should have been. No answer is entirely satisfactory. It does not reassure him to think that Luxord knew how to play Saix's gifts like a gamepiece -- or, even better, if Luxord had _gambled_ on something occurring, gambled or known all along.

He assumes the latter. "What did you make me see?"

"I had you look at a candle," is Luxord's gentle, almost mocking reply. "Was there anything there other than that?"

Saix catches his breath.

"I saw," he begins, and then breaks off there, mouth dry, as if saying the words will take an unforgivable step into making them real, and unchangeable. He forges ahead anyway. "I saw what might have been."

"Sounds _fascinating._ " Luxord's eyes are very bright, and very sharp. "Did you at least find a way to escape your Black Maria?"

 _No._

All Saix says aloud is one more word: "Enough."

Luxord shrugs, all showman's grace and congeniality. "I suppose one can only cheat destiny for so far," he remarks idly. "That's five times you've refused a fate, you know. Most people only receive the chance to deny one." Somehow during Saix's trances, the gambler produced a gameboard to fiddle with, which only hurts the berserker's sense of time and place: that game had not been there when he'd first focused on the candle, and it begs the question of just how much time had been lost.

This gameboard seems unrelated to gambling or odds, but in every other respect, it's the same as all the rest. White against black and no in-between shades, the battlefield composed of two lines. Pointed triangles face one another like the teeth of a beast.

Saix does not intend to be caught.

"They were not real," the berserker says calmly, the familiar denial spilling out of his throat. "Whether I accept them or not has no bearing on what _is._ " Arguing with Vexen has given him practice at ignoring anything not made blatantly obvious; the scientist is -- _was_ , his mind murmurs, slipping into past tense without his bidding -- so convinced of his own existence that it's fallen to the diviner to remain objective, pointing out the flaws in IV's arguments with ruthless efficiency, and yet fully convincing neither of them, in the end.

"And what _is_ real, Saix?" Luxord echoes quietly back, balancing black and white between his knuckles. "What exists here, in a World that Never Was?" A jerk of the hand sends the pieces airborne, and he turns his wrist to catch them, fingers closing over the cold hard shapes with a click of ivory. "What exists across all the times, across all the futures that could have been? Is it any less real, because you are not there to perceive it?"

With that, Luxord opens his hand, and reveals nothing there.

Saix finds that his retort has died stillborn in his throat.

"Decide what you value, Saix," Luxord murmurs at last, cocking his head like an inquisitive, oversized parakeet. "The time to make your peace is now, whether it's with your ghosts, or with yourself. After all..." He smiles, the more familiar cards spinning out of thin air to fan around his face.

"...we only have so much time left."

"Then why show me anything at all?" Saix asks. The words _false hope_ don't ring true on his tongue, so he refrains from using them. "Why waste time considering what could have been?

"To understand the value of what you've lost. We see things when we're ready for them," Luxord adds, smooth as river glass, and then gathers up the taper off the table. "Until then, we delude ourselves with pale imitations." Cards swirl. The gameboard vanishes as effortlessly as ice in a melting river. "The candle does not rewind."

\- - - - -

The Dusks come back with reports: Xaldin is dead.

Xemnas takes the news with a blink, and then sips his coffee.

They had just received word from the Beast's Castle, a few of Xaldin's Dragoons surviving long enough to stumble home with the news. The loss of Demyx was surprising, but not unsalvageable; the destruction of one of the senior members of the Organization is more cause for alarm. Xaldin had presided over the Organization for years without faltering. Saix is certain that he'd never seen the full strength of the lancer.

Saix does not talk to the other members about what _they_ believe will happen next, not because he fears the answer, but because he knows it will be nothing that surprises him. It is their hearts they have lost, not their ability to think.

 _Xaldin's last words came, as most of their conversations tend to, in the middle of a spar._

 _"It's said," the lancer said calmly enough, catching the tines of Saix's claymore in a three-spear mesh of dragon-shaped metal, "That the hand executes, but the eye judges, so all true compasses must be held in the latter. Wise words to keep in mind." The deadlock broke and III vaulted away, managing to perform another of his impossible handstands even on the shaky roof tiles._

 _Saix didn't see how he could respond verbally, so he pulled his blade close and charged forward to close the distance, equally composed. The spar was not intense; he'd had more trouble keeping his breath during matches with Vexen's ghost._

 _The sudden memory, unwarranted and unwanted, made Saix forget the uneven, unsteady surface beneath him, and his eyes widened briefly as ceramic gave way underfoot._

 _He was well capable of catching himself, if not maintaining his dignity, and a fall of that kind wouldn't be enough to even bruise him, but Xaldin was there anyway, hand to his shoulder to hold him steady -- and keep him from pulling away._

 _"Try to remember them," and in the lancer’s voice was an order, delivered as conversationally as a tearoom chat. The hand dropped away. Saix found his own physical equilibrium easily enough, although his mental one remained unbalanced._

 _"What for?" He didn't normally question his superiors, but he sensed the cryptic hints were deliberate._

 _"In case you should find yourself searching for the appropriate direction in the storm, of course." Xaldin banished his lances with a shrug of the shoulders, and pivoted away._

 _Saix was left behind._

\- - - - -

Finally after the Grim Reaper is reduced back into oblivion, Saix is forced to stop and take inventory of the scattered days. Axel's slipped the chase again, leaving Saix distracted and double-checking on Kairi. The Keyblade Master has reappeared, wielding new forms of power; keyblades that shed bees with each swing might appear humorous in any other situation, but Saix fails to find anything childish about a weapon that can still close worlds.

When the Groundshaker rises and collapses underneath Sora's hand, even Saix cannot hold his tongue; he summarizes all his thoughts together as Xemnas is going over the details of some task the Superior still feels has import. Saix is not certain how much of the assignment is valid, and how much is shallow habit; it really does not matter if they hold dominion over one additional realm or twenty.

"Is it wise," he asks Xemnas in the middle of a warning against rooftop cannons, "to let things go on like this?"

The Superior shrugs, as cold and indifferent as he ever. His expression is enigmatic. "Axel searches for the Key of Destiny," he says at last. "Just as the Key of Destiny searched for his Other. Even with the loss of Roxas, we still retain a means of finding the Keyblade."

The verdict almost pushes Saix to challenge the wisdom of such a decision -- almost, but for the fact that he's not certain how much difference it would make.

They wind through the rest of the departure procedure without any deviation, though the issue of XIII hangs on the air. Xemnas is the one who speaks the inevitable conclusion aloud:

"Will you go through Roxas's rooms as well?"

As soon as the Superior asks the question, Saix realizes he has been putting off that exact task. Something about the idea is distasteful, though, and the berserker shakes his head. "I don't see the purpose, for someone technically still alive."

"It's said that the more exposure to a force causes the one exposed to become affected," Xemnas murmurs simply enough, brows arching up to frame his eyes in a perfect simulation of innocence -- if it weren't for the unreadable flatness in his gaze. The Superior reaches out one gloved hand to fiddle with a trinket on his desk: a globe filled with swirling flakes that eddy around a crude sculpture of a castle. For a meaningless souvenir, it captures his attention far better than any of Saix's words.

"We have seen this principle before, with Darkness," the Superior continues, gaze going distant as he speaks of a time and a place well before Saix's Other had any inkling of what a Heartless even _was_. After the initial observation, there's a pause, and as Xemnas sinks into broody silence and one of Saix's hamstrings threatens a cramp, the berserker wonders if the Superior will ever circle back to his original point.

Clarity returns to Xemnas like a prism turned in light, catching the faintest illumination and splicing it into a sharp fan of color as bright as the sudden keenness in the senior Nobody's gaze.

"You should be wary, Saix, of a fascination with the dead."

Saix cannot think of a good way to answer that, so instead he ducks his head in mute acknowledgment, choosing to forego the possibility of his tongue betraying his brain. Xemnas's words make him unaccountably perplexed, reminding him uncomfortably of the empty rooms and the barren riddles waiting inside.

Mentally, Saix shakes off his own hesitation.

"I will go to Cherry-Tree Lane, as you have commanded," he offers, gaze respectfully lowered. It would not do to lack propriety at this stage of affairs; his obedience to Xemnas is not a thing that can waver, even if he is not entirely certain any of them will survive it.

Xemnas sets the snowglobe on the desk again, folding his hands together under his chin as he studies Saix blandly. Suddenly, Saix has the strangest impression that Xemnas's mind is as far from the present as possible -- as if he's providing responses to a conversation that is only partially involved in.

The Superior's next question only seems to confirm it. "So, you have made up your mind, Diviner?"

Saix blinks. Surely Xemnas heard his acknowledgement of the mission. "Yes."

"And has your choice brought you joy?"

The question is bizarre; Saix seizes upon the technicalities. "I'm incapable of it."

"The memory of joy, then."

"I apologize," Saix answers, wondering how best to extract himself from the Superior's sudden inquiries, "but there is no time to afford distractions."

"Is that what you told him?"

That question stops Saix as effectively as a barbed-wire cage. He feels its sharp edges pressing about him, seeking skin and blood. If Xemnas had been aware about Vexen's soul, if he had _known all along_ \-- "Sir?"

Xemnas only smiles. "Never mind."

The map of London crinkles as Saix rolls it up, securing it with a loop of silk for the journey. The portal opens under his touch, dark oval stroking through the air, and he steps through with the Superior's words simmering in his head.

The seventeenth house of Cherry-Tree Lane is not hard to locate. Its neighborhood is one of the few which has not yet been claimed by the shroud of gloom that has enveloped much of the city. Its inhabitants are alive -- for now -- and travel the streets at leisure while looking unworried by the mist on the horizon.

" _Awful_ fog today," he hears two elderly matrons cluck together as they toddle home from a bakery, even as they instantly begin to claim that it's been worse in years past.

London is not yet a nightmare. The assault is still in the preliminary stages. Heartless scurry along the bushes and trash cans, resembling overgrown rats instead of world-destroyers. Dusks follow close behind. Here and there, a few helmeted individuals blow whistles and wave their clubs, but that is the only sign of resistance that Saix can find; the natives have not reached a state of panic.

He lands on a roof whose tiles are smeared with pigeon droppings. Its chimneys are stuffed with swallow nests. His mind neatly sidesteps the awareness that he'll have to clean his boots off later. Instead, his gaze turns to the horizon, dotted here and there with squat buildings that belch billows of smoke.

Zexion's reports claimed a persistent source of Light on this world, and that it would be best to ensure that it never joined Sora as an ally. After all, the Keyblade Master has collected an assortment of companions -- and those who do not walk with him directly lend their powers in other ways, through magics, through weapons, through secrets.

But instead of some grand knight waiting on the flat rooftops, fiercely defending her home, there's a woman primly applying powder to her nose.

Saix stares at her as she dabs the cotton puff against her cheeks, studying her reflection in a small mirror. The woman doesn't seem afraid, and he's grudgingly impressed despite himself. He's seen stronger-looking people shudder at the sights of the Dusks curling around each other like frantic dancers. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees one of his Berserkers sidle up too close for her comfort, and it's promptly spooked away by a sharp, well-placed umbrella whack.

All in all, however, she doesn't seem up to much, which is why Saix startles when she tucks her face powder away and leans forward, settling her hand atop of his.

"I'm not the person you're _really_ searching for, am I?" It's not precisely a question so much as a matter-of-fact statement, as if she's merely confirming a predetermined fact. There's no concern in the voice; if he had to put a word to it, it would be _sensible._

Saix stares at her upturned nose and apple-red cheeks and absolutely ridiculous hat, and wonders what she thinks he's arrived here to do. "If you are hoping for mercy, you would be incorrect."

"No," she insists contrarily, as if she's speaking to a very small child. "You've got that look about you."

"A look?" Despite the bizarre pronouncement, Saix finds himself humoring her.

"A hungry sort of look. Like you're seeking out something you never knew you wanted, until you fell in love with it being there." Thin, dry lips quirk upwards, and the hand atop his suddenly moves to give it an almost insulting pat. Saix can feel it through the material, delicate bones wrapped in soft kid leather, and he does not know why he simply isn't snarling at her to be silent until heroes arrive to rescue her.

"That's not love," he says. "That's dependence."

Her smile is enigmatic, infuriatingly calm. "Aren't they all the same thing?"

He's so disconcerted that he backs away, deciding to let the Heartless deal with this problem on their own time. Sora cannot want this woman as an ally. She is too _strange._

He walks the rest of Cherry Tree Lane idly reviewing the status of The Castle That Never Was. Light is never a concern, now, not with the brilliance that illuminates its sky. Kingdom Hearts is flush with power; it is nearly complete. Even the Dusks feel it, silver shapes streaking through the streets with something almost like purpose as they go about their duties.

As he wanders through a park -- stepping carefully over some hobo's chalk drawings on the ground -- Saix spares brief attention for the sight of a small group of children yowling delightedly as they wrestle with an oversized kite. The woman he assumes to be their chaperone has her back turned to him, her silhouette strangely familiar; he has, however, made his decision in that particular matter, and prefers not to tempt his resolve by confirming her identity. Instead, he looks down.

The pictures may be crude, but they provide a more interesting view than the weather, which is currently undergoing what Saix imagines is the climate's version of a sulk. Good taste is absent. The drawings have a quality to them that he doesn't appreciate; the colors are bright, bold, and mostly unrealistic, but capture his attention easily enough against the wet grey pavement. Saix pauses midstep over a strange collage of pale birds against an azure sky, their species impossible to determine from the rough lines and flat hues.

He blinks as chalk feathers on coal-lined wings suddenly seem to stir.

"Michael," the woman is saying, her voice as tinny as if it is coming from the bottom of a well, "this is not a time to pout. Now, then. On three. One, two..."

Saix keeps his eyes fixed onto the particular panel carefully, but whatever illusion of movement there might have been is gone, and he completes the step forward.

Suddenly, there's a peculiar sense of something _shifting_ beneath him, rising up from the ground; instinct prompts Saix to leap away and whirl on the curb, anticipating Heartless or attack --

All that greets his eyes is a drawing of an empty sky, and pale white shapes that remind him of paper fluttering into the city fog.

"Careful there, mate," pipes up the hobo, whose cheeks are smeared with soot. "Can't get a good picture these days with careless shoes, you know!" With that, the man tactlessly slides his upside-down hat closer towards Saix, an implied request for munny.

Saix snorts.

As he turns away from the transient, he deliberately lets the toe of his boot scuff across a panel of winding vines and tropical flowers, ignoring the hobo's yelp of dismay as the colors smear together.

He walks on.

Around him, the trees remain in a strange perpetual season that isn't quite summer, but isn't exactly fall either -- though something about the near-barren park brings winter to mind, more than anything else. It's of no consequence. Saix passes a rusty carousel with a drowsing attendant, a pond with ducks and swans peacefully floating on the water. The world is very still.

When he reaches a crossroads filled with scattered park benches, the tip of his boot kicks against some scrap of metal on the ground, sending it clattering away into the low-lying fog. The noise sets a startled chorus of cooing; a flock of birds takes off from the ground, fleeing him in a cloud of feathers.

When he turns around -- just in time to see the last of the birds escape -- there is no one left in the park. The hobo is gone. The children and their keeper have vanished. Only the chalk drawings remain, and even they look blurrier than before.

A straggler pigeon swoops past, and disappears into the fog.

Something about the winged shape makes Saix's fingers itch, reminding him unaccountably of a moment he can't put a time or a name to in his memory. It's enough that the next time he passes the doors of the communal library in the Castle That Never Was, he finds his footsteps turning in its direction. The room is a repository of utterly useless information, so if there is anywhere in the castle that he'll be able to find information about birds -- once, he might have asked Lexaeus or one of the other widely-traveled members of the Organization, but now they're gone -- he knows it is here.

He doesn't find the paper-white species he's looking for but he learns more about avians in one afternoon than he ever did in his life, beyond which ones were ideal for consumption or even simply raising as companions.

Unease is a companion that lives under Saix's skin, that fills his bed and his thoughts and his dreams that night. Rather than fight for sleep, he sits up in the library and reads about birds that peddle their young, sliding them into the nests of others; he reads about landbound emperors that cut through icy water as swiftly as their cousins soar through the air. He reads about birds that spend their entire lives on the wing, migrating from one tip of the world to another, never given time to rest.

If Vexen were a bird, Saix thinks, he would be a tern.

He does not know why the association strikes true, but it does.

As soon as he thinks this, he feels an absurd pun bubble up from a corner of his brain: Vexen is a tern for the worse.

As soon as he thinks _that_ , Saix wonders when he started putting Vexen's ghost in the present tense again.

He forces doubt away, imagining what he can of Vexen's dry voice instead -- forcing his ears to frame sounds out of nothing, to reconstruct what he can imagine of the scientist's reaction to such a joke. _What are you **doing?**_ suddenly lances into his thoughts with all the pain of a frozen knife, and Saix buries his face in his hands.

"Losing my mind," he answers after a few moments. The words are blurred into his palms. He does not open his eyes yet; he does not want to risk breaking the spell. "I am losing my mind."

Vexen's ghost is quiet for a moment. _Well,_ he states primly, _at least you can join everyone else._

"Wait." Saix's head lifts just enough to seek out a familiar specter half-visible in the mote-ridden sunbeams, unable to keep from looking, just once. Nothing is there: nothing but light, but dust, but charades. "If Demyx and Xaldin are dead, can't you find them?"

The illusionary presence seems to think on the question a moment, chewing over and weighing an answer before its slow, careful response.

 _I'd have to know what really mattered to them first._

The answer writhes in Saix's mind, like a caterpillar smothering in its own cocoon; he leans back in his chair while he considers it. His reasoning for the question is certainly not borne out of any sympathy for the other Nobodies' plight, but of a question he'd been turning over in his mind. A final mystery he wants to understand.

 _Are you that concerned about what happened to them as well, after death? When did it ever start to matter to you?_ If Saix listens hard enough, he can hear the crinkle of leather as Vexen crosses his arms in aloof disapproval. The scientist's tone is scathing, filled with derision; words follow each other in a litany of verbal needles, every point seeking to strike home. _It's a waste to dwell on such matters before they actually occur._

Saix doesn't bother to argue, almost taking comfort in the onslaught. Vexen's criticism is hardly soothing, of course, but -- odd as it may be -- the scorn is almost relaxing to listen to now. Eventually, the scientist gives up with a snort, and that's when Saix finds the time to slip in a question he isn't aware he wanted to ask: "Do you think I'm expecting to die?"

At the challenge, there is a beat and a pause, and then Vexen steps forward, invisibly -- and, by some unspoken agreement, Saix leans back, feeling his shoulders bury themselves into the soft leather of the armchair. Retreat is impossible. Retreat is unwanted, as well, and he senses the scientist's approach without fear, but with caution. _Warranted_ caution, at that, stemming from warnings about getting caught up in fabrications of one's own mind, about getting tangled with memories of other lives until he begins to wonder if this is another fever-dream, another false vision.

It doesn't matter. The memory of Vexen's body settles over him with tentative familiarity. The weight of bones and skin and leather _almost_ feels solid enough as the illusion leans forward slowly, as if to offer Saix the chance to refuse.

The diviner did not -- could not -- _does not._

Abruptly, it occurs to him that he's thinking in all the wrong tenses _again_ , but he doesn't find it in himself to care, for the duration of a self-indulgent hallucination. For the ghost of a ghost.

Saix still remembers the borrowed skins of old lives, oozing lesions in his brain that wince whenever he brushes too close. He applies what he has learned from them: the sensitive spot at Vexen's back that makes him squirm and gasp when pressed, the plain brown mole behind his ear that arouses him instantly when sucked. Saix draws on borrowed time, on memory, on lives that never played out, on lives that _have_.

It's clumsy to touch himself in what is, technically, a public room -- but no one is really left to intrude on him, to notice the way he's tugging his own jacket hungrily open to bare it for the touch of the air. With the coating of his glove in place, he can almost pretend it is another person's fingertips trailing over his stomach. There's a kind of comfort in hoping that wherever or whenever they are, the planes of Vexen's body might always remain the same -- as is the way he jerks his hips and growls Saix's name like it's a curse or a blessing, or a mixture of both.

As Vexen lowers his mouth down like a cold flame across Saix's throat, time folding and short-circuiting across visions that never were, Saix finds his thoughts assembling themselves in a desperate attempt for reason. Logic comes to him as bright and blinding as any epiphany: it is not important if Vexen exists or not, because he is real enough for now, and maybe _for now_ is all the time they've ever had, anyway.

"What really mattered to _you_ , Vexen?" Saix finds himself asking, wondering between breaths that come out half-gasping, and then he comes out of his trance despite his best efforts, the illusion falling away from him and leaving him as cold as if he has been doused in ice water.

\- - - - -

Some time after the curious incident with Luxord and the visions, the issue of Fate crosses Saix's mind. While he hardly bears the concept of _Destiny_ any grudge, he's not sure whether the prospect of his thoughts being manipulated step-for-step by Luxord is better than imagining that all those possible outcomes could have ever been changed.

Or the third possibility: believing that Luxord was the one who deliberately created those visions in the first place, toying with Saix as if the berserker were little more than one of his chess pawns, nudging Saix into place between squares that hovered at the fringes of vision like tricks of the light.

He escapes the dilemma when the sterility of Vexen's rooms becomes too much to put up with; he does not want to leave anything out of place in the scientist's belongings, and sitting in one place feels too much like staring at a corpse.

Saix goes to his own quarters instead.

The creature who would become VII arrived at the Castle That Never Was with nothing save for clothes and a scar. The clothes are long gone, incinerated for the sake of hygiene mere days after his arrival. The scar is immutable. All told, Saix certainly doesn't have had any kind of keepsake in his possession to hoard jealously in his quarters, much less to give to any other member of the Organization as a part of some strange not-quite-courtship.

He isn't certain why he's prowling through his own rooms, obeying some unspoken compulsion to turn things over until he can find something he can call his own, some trace of his presence that might remain.

Saix doesn't know whether to be chilled or grimly satisfied that there is nothing to find.

Nothing of _his_ , at least. There is one spot of color piled high on one corner of his bed, a hundred tiny paper corpses that never took flight. Crudely shoved together without a care for order, a great many of them are crumpled beyond recognition, a few more tumbled to the floor where he's knocked them away in his sleep. The patterns clash terribly, making his eyes ache, and he supposes if they'd had eyes, they might be staring at him reproachfully for treating them like so much rubbish.

He remembers the ghost's last words. He also remembers that he does not have the time to spare for trivialities.

Still, when Saix is crouched before the common room's hearth and feeding each bird into the flames, he can find himself almost absurdly relieved that there is no longer enough idle members of the Organization to see the Luna Diviner kneeling in the soot and ashes like a common kitchen maid.

That task complete, he suddenly finds himself with too much time on his hands.

Saix goes back to the library again, restless and not wanting to stay in Vexen's rooms for some reason; he's not entirely sure what compels him to move, much less tuck one of the academic's journals under his arm before he goes. It's not as if a change in venue will illuminate the words inside any further. What _is_ unexpected -- as he pushes the doors open and steps into the familiar paper-scented air -- is that he'll have company.

But he does.

Somehow Saix never thought Xigbar would be one for books; the Freeshooter is more inclined -- in Saix’s mind -- to spend time outdoors in practical pursuits, rather than sit quietly in a chair enraptured by a book. Then again, one year ago, Saix would have thought the same of himself. Still it is a surprise to see the other Nobody in the library, crosslegged on a ladder and volume in hand, scribbling busily in the margins.

Xigbar barely spares Saix a glance but the diviner can tell that his presence is acknowledged. For one thing, Saix was hardly being subtle when he shoved open the doors. For another, the senior Nobody is tapping his pen against the wood of the ladder, a steady rat-tat-tat calculated to drive Saix to madness.

Fortunately, Saix has already crossed that particular boundary, and he pays the noise no heed. Eventually, Xigbar lets it taper off.

It continues on like that for a while, the silence not exactly comfortable, but certainly mutual. They both keep to their own halves of the room, indulging in huddled conferences with paper. Xigbar's mainly involves the click and slide of stepladders skating from one line of books to another as he searches for some mysterious reference in the shelves. Saix finds he has to keep himself from fussing with the pages of Vexen’s until they turn dog-eared from his fretting. For the most part, they leave each other alone.

Until, of course, Xigbar's curiosity wins out.

"Man, his handwriting sucks."

What makes Saix start is not that the voice comes from above his head, or that it is accompanied by a hand tugging at the book in his hands -- it's that it's _Xigbar's_ voice he hears. The voice of a _living_ presence, rather than audio detritus. A voice that isn't Luxord and his cryptic riddling, or the empty echoes of people from a false world, or Vexen's ghost, remarking caustically on some minor detail Saix has overlooked.

It almost stuns him enough that, by the time he recovers, Vexen's journal is firmly in Xigbar's grasp. The gunner squints at its pages while he realigns himself so as to no longer be upside-down.

"Hmm... nope," he says aloud. "Doesn't look any better right side up. Can't read this at all."

Saix snatches the volume back with the defensive protectiveness of a parent, the indignation of an affronted author; the gunner's hold is slack enough to allow it, and all he offers the junior Nobody for his scowl is a devil-may-care grin.

"So what brings you to the library, Saix?"

The answer is honest enough. "I needed a place to think."

The Freeshooter's arched brows do not bode well. "And you couldn't do this wherever you've been holing yourself up in these days?"

Saix shifts, uncomfortable -- although he reminds himself that he shouldn't be. "No."

"All of Ansem's apprentices were taught to appreciate a good book," Xigbar says, shrugging. "Some took to it better than others, but all of us knew the value of words. Didn't know _you_ had a taste for Vexen's research on fusion vectors, though."

Saix suddenly wonders if Xaldin, if Xigbar -- if even Xemnas has a stack of journals in his rooms, labeled with a name, and the reek of sentimentality all around. Somehow he can't quite imagine any others of the original six harboring such habits, as if Vexen were the only one of them to continue thinking of himself in terms of _human_ , whatever scientific proof he might claim.

He doesn't quite dare to phrase the question in his mind; instead, a more practical challenge comes out. "What else of his am I supposed to read?"

Xigbar seems surprised, then curious, to hear Saix bring it up. Inevitably, all he does is shrug.

"Well, I don't know. He never liked writing anything personal when I was around -- or when anyone else was. Didn't think he was into that."

The words press at a latch in Saix's mind, recalling a memory of Vexen that isn't of a ghost that shouldn't exist or the strange desperation privy to only those without hearts to hide it in: a day when he walked into Vexen’s laboratories and found the scientist penning what seemed like endless words in a journal with a blue label on the cover. Saix can't remember what exactly the title was, but he knows it certainly hadn't been about _science._

The weight of the book in his hands suddenly asserts itself, and he finally becomes aware of the odd inertia the conversation has fallen into. Saix blinks himself out of his reverie.

"Perhaps," is all he says. And leaves it at that.

Xigbar gives him a funny look, but either the gunner hasn't noticed the brief trance, or lacks any interest to inquire; he doesn't press further. " _I_ wanted to get some last formulas down," he explains, waving his newly-reappeared journal. "You know, in case I don't get a chance to finish them. Never _could_ figure out the Jagd Disarray Paradox, unfortunately. It was a proof that Xaldin and I were working on -- we were making some okay breakthroughs. But the doofus just _had_ to go on ahead before we finished."

They work in silence after this, Xigbar scribbling, taking frequent pauses to chew noisily on the end of his pen.

"Xigbar," Saix says suddenly, not knowing why he's asking -- the last time he sought advice from another member of the Organization, he'd ended up with a headful of aborted worlds and amputated futures. "Have you ever wondered what it would be like if things had turned out differently?

The look that the gunner delivers back is just barely short of contempt. "Who doesn't? You'd have to be crazy not to second-guess yourself _at least_ once. What matters is what you do with what you've been given." With that, Xigbar twists his wrist sharply, sending the book away into whatever mysterious pocket of space he chooses to utilize as storage. The pen goes behind the gunner's ear, and the senior Nobody himself gives Saix a sharp, curt nod. "Well, don't think too much. Not much luxury for what-ifs these days. Be seeing you around, then."

Then the library is quiet once more, and Xigbar is gone, exiting with steps as soft as gravity in space.

Saix does not waste time; he fumbles for the itch of memory that Xigbar's words triggered, hunting down the image of a blue-stamped book in his mind. The most time Saix might ever have spent with Vexen -- when he was alive -- were occasional trips to the laboratory. Generally the purpose was for simple checkups on physical progress and rate of recovery, a task that he knew the scientist generally pawned off onto Lexaeus or Zexion at any chance he got -- only to be thwarted by Xemnas' innocently barbed inquiries, and forced into doing it anyway. At the time, whether Vexen was a willing doctor or not mattered little to Saix; so long as he cooperated, the job would get done faster, and then he could go back to building up his strength.

Such regular visits, it seemed, made the scientist tired of his company -- more and more, Vexen would leave Saix to his own devices for interminable lengths of time, making him grit his teeth and choke down impatience as the senior Nobody bustled about elsewhere in the lab. After the first alchemical mishap, Saix had been absolutely forbidden from touching anything that smoked, simmered, boiled or glowed in the laboratory. The inevitable result was no better than what might be expected from a child: boredom.

Boredom, in the past, was what had made Saix reach for the journals stacked crosswise in Vexen's laboratories, leaves of scrap paper sticking out along the dogeared edges in tantalizing patterns.

Boredom is not what motivates him now. Reaching out with a shivering hand, he gravitates towards a library shelf, selecting a book at random. He flips one open and runs his thumb down lines of text and diagrams; familiar shapes leaping out at him, e's and s's and q's, until he finds himself silently mouthing the sounds under his breath until words form.

 _What are... looking at?_ Trembling just above inaudible, Vexen's voice licks against Saix's ears. Only careful self-control keeps Saix from jumping up and checking to see if the scientist has returned after all.

"You were always writing something," he responds simply, words thick and heavy. "I just want to know what it was."

The scientist ducks the question. _You're... educated in theory?_ Vexen says this like it was the most remarkable revelation he'd had all year, and for a brief moment Saix knew this was the point where a person with a heart might be stung.

"Yes," Saix says, just to prove the scientist's skepticism wrong. "I can be."

 _Interesting,_ Vexen mutters. _Very interesting._

With that line, Saix imagines he can almost feel the scientist manifesting in full -- as a solid presence, a _tangible_ weight, hatching itself out of the hallucination of a diviner's thoughts into something real once more. Vexen's hand brushes against the back of his neck; but he cannot help turning around, and when he does, the touch fades away into nothing.

\- - - -

Saix has no memories of encounters with Xigbar that were of any significance; he accepts the conversation in the library as their flagstone together, a simple enough summary of all the interactions they've ever had over the years. Surprisingly enough, the brush against another Nobody doesn't leave him with a head full of buzzing questions.

Just a strange itch to do something with his hands.

Saix leaves Vexen's journal on one of the sidetables and searches in the library until he finds the shelf of blank volumes; selecting one at random simply because he likes the feel of the cover under his fingertips, he pulls it from the shelf. One hand steadies its companions so that they do not tumble out with it, and he flips the journal open to study the pages inside.

The paper is crisp, empty. Saix imagines he can hear the lightly drawn lines thirsting for ink.

He summons the corridor to Vexen's rooms before he can think better of it, flipping on the lights almost absently before dropping Vexen's journal off to join its brothers on the coffee table. This would be, he knows, the point in time when a person would do something sentimental -- like write memoirs, _memories_ , pleas to old lovers and old arguments and old enemies.

Or they could choose to act in different ways: tidying up affairs, just in case, like Zexion had handled his own quarters before departing for Oblivion.

Saix takes the task up with concentration, splaying one of the blank journals on the table and staring at it.

As he searches in his pocket absently for a pen, his fingers encounter another obstruction. The single surviving paper crane is squashed flat from being tucked against his chest, its sharp, defined edges gone blurry from sawing against his heart. The curious irony of the paper's pattern only asserts itself now; snowdrops with the bright green of their stems sharp and clear against the silence of winter, and he has to stare for a long moment before he gathers the presence of mind to turn back to his task.

\- - - - -

If Saix wrote a story, it would begin like this:

Once there was a boy.

Or once there was a scientist.

Or, once there was a man who didn't want to die, but died anyway.

And one day, the boy found a ghost.

\- - - - -

Nothing is left in Vexen's rooms to tally for report. Saix has gone through them with an exacting eye for detail, and any value they might have added to the Organization is long since defunct. Saix's own possessions could use more evaluation, but the diviner finds himself suddenly obliged to finish tidying Vexen's things instead -- to pay that final form of respect for the scientist's memory, even if he had never really known Vexen at all, save through imagination.

In a bowl on a countertop, the citruses have shriveled and shrunk, time finally catching up to them. Saix presses his nose to one bright, waxy rind, breathing in the scent of life and prosperity a final time before he places all of them in the dustbin. His mind feels sharper, somehow, as he washes the bowl and dries it, carefully tucks it back into its proper place. It is not resignation that keeps him calm, but something else; perhaps by doing this he is, as Luxord says, making peace with the past.

One more thing he remembers to do is to dispose of the teapot's remains, a chore he can no longer put off.

The clinking of china into the wastebin is, he imagines, the chime of defeat.

He surveys his work: not a trace of his presence is left in Vexen's quarters, save for the journals on the tables, and perhaps that is as it should be. These are not his rooms. This is not his territory. In the end, he is merely an observer, a visitor, a trespasser on grounds where he does not belong. He has been accepted as a guest -- a guest, and _more_ , and the temptation to stay in this sanctuary is strong -- but it is time to cut his ties.

He thinks he feels coolness against his skin in the night, sometimes. Saix has enough control over his body to fake sleep when he must, and he knows that Vexen's ghost would not know the difference if its non-existence depended on it. As long as Saix keeps his breathing steady, he might lure the ghost to stay forever.

But still, when the breeze fades away and nothing else comes, Saix wonders if Vexen has never actually returned, and what stirs the air at night is nothing more than the Castle itself sighing.

It no longer seems to matter, even on the grand scale of things. Hearts. Kingdoms. Existence. Grand plans are unfolding, and Saix knows that they are all pawns now, caught up in whatever destiny that the Keyblade Master and Xemnas will unleash in their final clash.

For the first time since the entire situation began, as Saix wanders through the halls of the castle, listening to the emptiness and remembering what had been there before -- as if the Castle itself has become a Nobody, its heart leeched away -- he feels very much alone.

He might be the next to die. Like Vexen on another world in another life, no one would pause to take notice.

 _It will not matter_ , he reminds himself as he paces up a flight of stairs. _Kingdom Hearts is all that is important now._

After Saix is done walking through the Castle, he sits in Vexen's study, fingers curled around the single teacup he'd left out of the cabinet -- filled with plain water -- and listens to the silence.

\- - - - -

Dusks seek him out while he waits in Vexen's quarters. They bear rumors of Axel's death and the Keyblade Master's approach. To know that VIII's existence has been terminated presents a strange kind of satisfaction to his mind. He can't identify the sensation at first, until the memory of old emotions stirs in him like a waking beast.

Saix knew, eventually, that Axel would be punished: second betrayals are always easier than the first, and the firedancer had already played traitor before, participating in the fall of a castle and the loss of one of the only true holds they have on the Keyblade Master. Axel's loyalty had been in question ever since the fall of Oblivion, and after Roxas left, Saix anticipated VIII's subsequent departure.

He feels justified that Axel is dead -- more than the successful execution of a traitor should really merit. He doesn't understand why until he counts over Axel's transgressions in his mind and notices that he's listed murdering Vexen among the Flurry's crimes not once, but _twice_ \-- one in this world, and one in another that never existed, behind the wheel of an imaginary car.

 _Stupid_ of him, really, but now he can't help if the scientist has anything to do with his inexplicable sense of vindication.

The Dusks wait and hover. They cannot be impatient -- or afraid -- but their limbs waver, their bodies sway.

Luxord's admonishment rings in his head; they are all living on borrowed time, and it would be amiss for him to waste it.

Saix’s muscles mimic the motions of a fussy scientist, of a man whose quirky habits he has memorized through simple observation alone. He does not lick at his thumb to smoothen the paper, but bends his fingers into tight pincers to reshape the crane. He unfolds the head and refolds it once, twice, so that there is a stubby semblance of a neck and a beak suited for snapping up fish. He presses the battered edges of wings into long, arched points, into limbs beautiful enough and strong enough to carry their owner across the borders of one earth to another one beyond.

Out of the gangly shape of waterfowl, he finds the shape of a more athletic cousin emerging from the paper. When his work is done, he sits the figure on the palm of his hand, watching the sharp lines of the design catch the light, heavy with motes of dust and the silent promise of the future.

The tern is tucked without ceremony into the journal's jacket cover, and Saix takes up his pen one last time, jots down two words briskly on the first page, in the center, in defiance of how all journals must begin. He thinks maybe, he should write to Vexen; maybe his words should be, _I am sorry_ , except that he _isn't_ \-- isn't _sorry_ , doesn't _feel_ regret, but Saix still finds himself wondering if only things could have gone differently.

If only -- if only.

He studies them for a while, tasting how they weigh in his mouth; then, deciding that any attempts at writing to a ghost would be pointless, Saix shoves that journal aside and tries for another one.

This attempt only turns into a mess of crossed-out words and entire sections violently struck through with the tip of his pen. He tears out the pages when their mistakes look too ghastly, and then wonders what to do with them. Throwing the discards away would be incriminating; burning them would be melodramatic, and shredding the papers seems more effort than they're worth.

Finally, Saix summons a Dusk and shoves the papers at its head, flatly ordering it to swallow them whole. If it finds the request curious, it doesn't say so, and obligingly scoops the litter into its mouth, throat working as it chokes them down. For a brief instant, Saix almost orders it to regurgitate them; realizing his own ridiculous behavior, he refrains.

The Dusk bows, and then slips away.

Saix goes to find Kairi in her cell.

\- - - - -

This is the story Saix will never tell:

 _Once there was a man, who might have been a beast, who might have been a lover._

 _Once there was a ghost, who might have been a scientist, who might have been a friend._

 _Both of them were all of those and none of those, in all the worlds that were and weren't, that could have been, that might have been. And with that they had to be content._

 _There was no once upon a time._

 _There was no happily ever after._

 _There was only the day when the man discovered the ghost, and what followed._

Saix's mental pen wavers over the conclusion, the last line of the tale that he must set down, and he finds he cannot do it. None of the beginnings sound right. None of the ways he can think of to frame the ending lessen the sting.

He has been abandoned, but he abandoned Vexen first. And could it be abandonment at all, if the ghost never truly existed, or was never meant to be there to begin with?

Another idea surfaces from the muddle of his brain. Perhaps he hasn't been left behind, this time. Perhaps he's simply being waited for.

The moment the idea crosses his mind, he dismisses it as ridiculous, but the seed of the thought is there. If Saix is being waited _for_ , then the death is close enough that it has become impatient enough to beckon.

Despite himself, Saix finds the urge to lie: to wrap the truth in a fanciful bow and pretend it is satisfactory. He wants to write _they lived happily ever after_ or even _and then they were content_ , or even, perhaps, _and then they woke up and realized it was all a dream after all._

But, ultimately, Saix does not know what kind of ending would have made Vexen happy, or even if the scientist would have accepted one.

None of the beginnings sound right -- so he begins nothing.

None of the endings matter because if his story ends, he won't be around to write it -- so he ends nothing either.

Saix does not know how to dowse for eloquence, for the phrases to shape his intent, but he spreads his fingers apart on the paper and wills for meaning to arise, for substance to bubble up through the cream of the page and spell out a future for him to interpret.

Instead of his own destiny, however, Saix only finds the immediate future bubbling up in his thoughts. He knows that the Keyblade Master will likely never find this way to this wing of the castle -- Xemnas would direct the path Sora takes, even now, and there are paths to the higher towers that do not necessitate circling around abandoned rooms. Sora may yet find his way into the rooms of the others, in search of treasure, but Vexen's, isolated and remote, will remain undisturbed.

In a way, Saix is glad for that.

He senses the disturbance before the Dusks officially come for him: some sudden, jerky burst of precognition that's as gone as quickly as it appeared. Namine is manifest. Kairi has escaped.

\- - - - -

When even more Dusks track him down after his confrontation with Riku, bearing reports of Xigbar's death, Saix can hardly say he is surprised. Still, he wonders how the best response he can come up with is to wonder who will take up the Freeshooter's duties, now that Xigbar is gone -- only to abruptly realize that this is beyond their ability to compensate for, that there is no longer _time_ to compensate for it, no need.

They no longer have to wonder what will happen if Sora finds the Castle. He is already inside. He is past the front gates and is climbing the stairs, relentlessly plowing through the Dusks which attempt to slow him down, brutal in his assault. Riku and Kairi are assaulting the upper floors. Mickey was seen in the company of a figure wrapped in crimson bandages.

 _What happens when we can't hold them off?_ a boy's desperate voice asks in his mind, tone wavering and hesitant as it repeats itself, even though it never existed in the first place. _What happens when we die?_

Asi had no answers.

Saix does not either.

If he had a heart, this is the point where it would be breaking -- but Saix is a Nobody, and his lack of proper emotions may have directed more of his path than he consciously expected. If he had a heart, it might have shattered a thousand times over by now. Plus five.

But he doesn't, so he leans his hand against the book, and waits for words that will not come.

\- - - - -

In the end, Saix puts down the pen, and leaves all the pages blank save one. The paper crane stays folded inside its journal, wings still crumpled and bent.

He turns out the lights in Vexen's rooms before he goes.

\- - - - -

The presence of the Keyblade Master -- _Masters_ now, all three of them, Riku and Sora with Mickey close by -- near Addled Impasse is not a good sign. With the swath of destruction that lingers behind the group, it is unlikely that Saix will survive. All of Saix's taunts seem to have had great success in manipulating the enemy, but now Sora's inertia has started to spiral out of control; the Keyblade Masters are breaking free.

 _Experimental mako cannon_ , he thinks briefly -- but this is not a time of maybes, of possibilities, of warpaint and a boy named Even. This is not a world where Xemnas read a monotone eulogy for an estranged friend, awkward in a funeral suit borrowed from a vice-principal named Xaldin; this is not a place where Saix learned what it was like when the scientist could _smile._

Saix might not live through a clash with the Keyblade Master; Xemnas will, though, or he _must_ , for the Superior carries all their ambitions with him. Any attempts to control Sora and Roxas have been concluded. All that remains are the results.

"Will I meet them?" he asks the air beside him, not turning his head. "Will I find the others who have died before?"

No answer comes.

No answer _has_ come since Vexen bid him farewell and vanished, and even then, anything that Saix has struggled to discover has left him more conflicted than before. Attempts to _imagine_ the scientist there all have failed.

In the hall, Saix feels suddenly very alone.

Nothing in his search has explained why -- after all they had been through -- Vexen's ghost decided to abandon him. It might have been revenge for Saix's own disappearance, or a reason even more sinister: perhaps Vexen's ghost had truly never been there at all.

The ghost may have never existed to begin with. Visions of the dead might only have appeared as an indication of Saix's own imminent demise, a forewarning of Saix's doom. It might never have _been_ Vexen there, but Saix's own powers attempting to communicate some shred of meaning in the only way they knew how: by supplying the image of a ghost as an emphatic oracle of death.

The play no longer needs to be continued, now that Sora has come; the illusion is ending, the moment has come.

The charade is over.

 _We see things when we're ready for them,_ Luxord's voice purrs in his thoughts, and Saix jerks his head to the side just in time to watch a flood of giant cards rise from Havoc's Divide. Distantly, the shouting of Sora's protests resonates the window glass. Lesser Gamblers flit into view; then their master, silhouetted in light.

Luxord, who has never once shown himself in any of Saix's visions. Luxord, who is fighting for his life now.

Power twists around the Gambler's balcony. Saix can sense it crest, and then flicker out completely.

 _The candle does not rewind._

Saix lowers his head. He does not know any more what is real, save for the enemies assaulting the castle, and Xemnas's plan hanging like a ripened fruit in the sky. The sword in his hand is heavy. He does not know, and perhaps his gifts will never give him a clear answer, save that all his experiences have been real enough for now.

And maybe that's enough.

 _Will I see you there?_ he wonders, and then the doorway shimmers, and the Keyblade Masters step through.

\- - - - -

He has enough time during the battle to think of a few things, a handful of scattered impressions that tumble through his mind like quicksilver fish through the muddied river of his thoughts.

His rage does not protect him. His fury does not show the way. For every swing of his sword, Sora has a healing spell ready; for every wound Saix inflicts, Sora has a cure. The boy's damnable friends play interference whenever Saix thinks he can seize an opening, flailing shield and staff to keep him away long enough for the Keyblade Master to recover, and begin the assault anew.

 _Will I find you?_ goes through Saix's head again, and suddenly he is not sure _who_ he is thinking of -- Xemnas, Xaldin, Demyx, Xigbar.

Vexen.

As he turns, he can glimpse the dais outside the window where Xemnas waits. The Superior undoubtedly knows what is happening: he sees, he senses. Xemnas is watching Saix, distant and out of reach, and Xemnas will know the instant that Saix falls.

Xemnas will do nothing to save him.

But this is the path that Saix chose, knowing how risky it would be. He could have stayed in Vexen's rooms -- in the chambers of the dead, endlessly repeating rituals of teacups and pillows. Instead, Saix chose the living. He decided to follow Xemnas, to remain loyal, to defend even at the cost of his own existence.

And in this, at least, Saix can appreciate not having a heart right now: he can't regret his decisions.

The berserker twists his sword around in a flourish, bracing his own boots against the flat of the blade as he evades an ice spell that leaves his nose stinging from the cold. No sooner has gravity reclaimed him than he finds himself pivoting to avoid the knight's shield as it spins towards his head. With both duck and dog temporarily spent, Saix presses his advantage in the refractory period between their chained blows, sword whipping out in the hope of catching the Keyblade Master unawares.

Luck is not on his side. Not only does Sora deflect the blade, stars and sparks blooming from where their weapons collide -- the moment Saix's grip turns loose, the boy grabs it for himself, hand snaking around the hilt of the sword and wrestling it away.

Saix has seen Sora's face, had seen the defiance hiding there even when the boy was on his knees. Somehow at the time, it had surprised him to find Sora going down on his knees to beg -- but, then and now, he looks into Sora's eyes, and realizes that the boy has never truly succumbed to desperation. Roxas's determination is too strong to let him.

 _Where is **my** heart,_ Saix whispers as they fight -- or tries to whisper, finds himself gasping the words instead between flurries of attacks as Sora swings the flanged blade around and Saix ducks to avoid decapitation with his own weapon. Sora's hope and Roxas's dedication are a lethal combination; Saix has only half the equation, one person standing against two. His heart is missing. His heart is gone.

What might have given him power is no longer there with him.

Instead, he grasps for the light of Kingdom Hearts where it hovers serenely above them all. Saix is the Luna Diviner. He has seen lives that should not exist, has been shown possibilities that collapse around the same point to a terminal future. He carries the scryings like treasures in his soul, a million burdened what-might-have-beens in a World That Never Was; he is full of his power and madness, duel forces intertwined to produce a Nobody who calls the moon down.

If this is to be his last fight, he will make it a good one.

"Hold your banners high," he hisses under his breath, a non-existent promise for a non-existent world, for dreams that never will come. "High, high, _high._ "

\- - - - -

In the darkness, there is enough time to wonder.

 _Will I see you there?_


End file.
